This episode returned to a more Stargate-like feel, yes, it’s true.  Too bad I didn’t like anything about it – nothing.

First: I hate time-travel episodes.  They are rarely done well, and this one was no exception – what’s worse, looping in time is a bad plot tool, unless the looping itself is the premise.   Star Trek: The Next Generation did a looping episode well.

Second: There wasn’t just one “convenient coincidence” in this episode.  No, one convenient, random occurrence is expected.  It’s what you build a story on.  But four or five?  Come on, that’s just dumb.

1. They get infected by something from a planet they’ve been to previously.  (I’ll accept this without argument.)
2. The currently-accessible planet happens to have a cure for the infection.  (Two completely unrelated worlds, one with a disease and the other with a cure?  Visited one after the other, in the proper order?  That’s practically four coincidences by itself.)
3. The wormhole between the planet and Destiny happens to intersect with a solar flare, preventing them from returning to the ship.
4. The solar flare happens to be properly positioned such that the wormhole from the planet loops back on itself into the relatively recent past.
5. Since they know what’s going to happen, they know when the solar flare occurs, and thus they’re able to use the looping to presumably solve the situation.

I say “presumably” because they didn’t actually resolve the situation in the episode.  It’s pretty irritating, actually.  The Stargate formula is a generally self-contained episode.  Stargate Universe has been more like a giant multi-part episode than anything else.  It just doesn’t feel like Stargate.

I don’t want to repeat everything I said in my review of the Left 4 Dead 2 demo, but there’s a lot to talk about.

The weather effects in the Hard Rain campaign are quite well done, and the hotel fire at the beginning of the first campaign actually makes you feel like you’re in a hotel fire – you feel the urge to run through as fast as you can to escape the flames, though they don’t actually ever cut off your path (at least not that I could tell).

There are two types of ammo that you can deploy: explosive, which stumbles special infected, and incendiary, which sets things on fire.  That’s the fun one

There are also laser sight upgrades, which increase your weapon’s accuracy.  They only apply to your currently equipped primary weapon, so if you change weapons you lose the upgrade.

As for the Infected, there are obviously the new Specials that I mentioned before – the Spitter, the Jockey, and the Charger – but there’s also a female version of the Boomer.  I haven’t confirmed this, but the word on the street is that the female Boomer can move while she, uh, vomits at you.  (She’s also supposedly louder, making her easier to locate.)

I mentioned the armored CEDA agents when I talked about the demo; there are also clowns (who make noise and attract more common infected), there are mudders (who crouch low to the ground and like to hide in muddy water), and there are guys in fireproof suits.

The new Scavenge game mode is extremely fun, and Survival and Versus are still just as awesome; Realism mode is extremely involving.  I was so immersed that I actually ducked in my chair when a Tank threw a chunk of concrete at me.

My only gripe thus far is that today when I logged on, my achievements had been reset (I had 20-some already).  It’s not too big a deal, but I guess that’s what happens during launch week.  Maybe there were some cheaters and Valve couldn’t tell who had cheated and who couldn’t.  I have confirmed that the reset was widespread, but I don’t know if it was global.

I’m going to echo Ars Technica’s review – Left 4 Dead 2 is well worth the money.

The official release time of L4D2 is 2.5 hours from now, but Valve intended to release it 3 hours early; at least, that’s true if you go by Pacific time.

So technically it’s 30 minutes late but 2.5 hours early still.  I think someone’s having trouble configuring the release:

At least, I’m pretty sure there aren’t seven editions of Left 4 Dead 2…

Edit: A few minutes later, there are still seven copies, but the date has been changed to Nov 16, 2009.  And of course the duplicates were removed just as I typed this.

Edit 2: And of course, now the single listing has Nov 17, 2009 listed as the release date.  They really shouldn’t do this stuff on a production server…

Edit 3: It ended up coming out just one hour “late”.  The nerd rage literally crashed Steam’s forums.  It was definitely worth the wait, though; I’ll write a post later this week about it.

I’m watching the second episode of V right now.  There are some things that don’t make sense.

• The Visitors have all this advanced technology, but the only photos they have of the resistance cell from the first episode are blurry.  If you can travel interstellar space, create holograms, make human skin suits… you can definitely have your flying recon drone record high quality video.
• If the Visitors have agents in the FBI, they probably have agents in all sorts of government groups.  They should be able to take the recording of the 911 call they intercepted and do voice searches.  (If I were doing an invasion this way, I’d definitely make databases of peoples’ voices.)
• Obviously, given that they have agents all over the place, the Visitors should have a lot more influence than the show indicates.  They’ve been around for decades, most likely; that’s enough time to infiltrate relatively high levels of world governments.  (Compare with Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’s shapeshifter infiltration of Federation and Klingon governments.)

So… yeah.

Cory Doctorow is a popular blogger.  xkcd refers to him often (usually wearing goggles and a cape and riding a hot-air balloon in the blogosphere).  He’s fairly intelligent when it comes to technology, or so I am led to believe…

… but I’m beginning to wonder.  Today, he posted a blog entry in which he claims the following:

The MPAA has successfully shut down an entire town’s municipal WiFi because a single user was found to be downloading a copyrighted movie. Rather than being embarrassed by this gross example of collective punishment (a practice outlawed in the Geneva conventions) against Coshocton, OH, the MPAA’s spokeslizard took the opportunity to cry poor (even though the studios are bringing in record box-office and aftermarket receipts).

That sounds pretty bad, doesn’t it?  To read that summary, you’d think that these facts were true:

• The town runs a municipal wireless network providing internet access to its thousands of residents.
• The MPAA initiated a lawsuit which resulted in the network being forcibly shut down, preventing thousands of people from accessing the internet.
• The MPAA took the opportunity to whine about lost profits.
• The MPAA was thus violating the Geneva Conventions.

As it turns out, none of those things are true.  Doctorow actually links to his original source, though he apparently didn’t read it.  I’ll summarize the sequence of events for you:

1. A free wireless access point is set up at the county courthouse.  It covers a one block area.  Regular users number in the dozens.
2. A user used the free connection to download a copyrighted movie, and the MPAA noticed.
3. The MPAA notified the ISP.
4. The ISP notified the county.
5. The county shut down the free access point.
6. The MPAA, when asked to comment, said that piracy is something the movie industry fights every day, and that it’s a common occurrence in towns big and small; the spokesperson never mentions profits one way or another.

Even a cursory reading of the Coshocton Tribune article would have shown Doctorow that his summary was a) grossly inaccurate and b) highly inflammatory.

I realize that he has a great desire to fight the MPAA and RIAA’s lawsuit-happy copyright enforcement tactics.  I do too.  But flooding the internet with deliberate misinformation doesn’t help anyone.

And to the Slashdot editors – come on, guys, can’t you even do thirty seconds of fact checking before you post articles?  It’s so common for you to post articles without fact-checking nowadays that I don’t believe anything I read on Slashdot until I read the source articles myself.  It’s almost to the point that I may as well stop reading Slashdot entirely.