"san" just shows familiarity and endearment. Sometimes it's used ironically, or sometimes just to be familiar without the endearment attached.
Kishimoto is the guy's personal name, and Yoshihisa is the guy's family name.
The Japanese animation style is up for opinion. In my opinion it's meant to be drawn quickly and with a high level of conformity. This way you get similar quality across numerous hours of animation, with not much effort. "Cel shading" is used to give the most effect of depth and light with the least amount of effort and the smallest possibly palette of inks.
Also, again on the style, often Japanese animators like to include elements of "manga" comic drawing into their animated forms. "Manga" was designed around imparting the greatest sense of action, space (depth) and emotion possible using the least number of drawings and frames. Animators will sometimes use manga techniques just for a "roots" appeal, or sometimes because it would be more quick and effective to use a cartoonish looking manga image even in the middle of a "realist" animated sequence. This isn't always done just to save time drawing or to save ink -- typically it's done to maintain a speedy pace of the narrative, or to lend a character a diminutive cast by suddenly drawing them as a comic throwback in the midst of characters who are maintaining themselves better (and drawn in a cel-shaded, realist setting).
The resulting aesthetic has come to be loved and enjoyed by people around the world.
What techniques would you prefer they use? Do you prefer all of your animations rotoscoped or something?
Part of the appeal of River City Ransom is just how much content -- quality content, much of it -- they packed into this little side-scrolling beat-em-up.
There are even weird hidden wonders like, if the enemy throws a baseball at your head but you deflect it with a stick, IT'S ON -- Stickball time, and you and the enemies get into formation and play a damn game of stickball.
And, it's a beat-em-up with role playing elements like items, skills, and stats. There are some other games like that for the same system (Little Ninja Brothers for example, with its Kung Fu Heroes style battle screens) but this game is modern and admittedly slick.
So, consider how powerful that was back in the 8-bit days, and consider how that still resonates as a "good game" today.
How in the hell do you capture that, again? You might say "well they are taking a good step in the right direction by retro-styling it as 8-bit", but is that all it is?
Think of it dynamically: there is potentially so much *more* that could be done with the game, today. This is the same problem all devs face when they're planning a franchise reboot from the 8-bit days to the modern, post-3d-playforming days. The devs have to ask "how much space of the new world of gaming should this game occupy".
I'm not saying that making RCR into a cartoonish Grand Theft Auto is going to somehow improve it, either. I'm saying that the envelope has changed.
The original game was explosive because it packed all of that game into that tiny 8-bit envelope, when there was nothing else to work with. Now, there's tons of other stuff to work with. You can still pack just as much game into just as small of a bit width, but the envelope is so much bigger, now, there's not going to be as much explosive force.
It's the big let down of retro-styled gaming. It seems like such an awesome idea to make more 8-bit games, as if the legacy didn't leave enough of them behind, but then you sit down and play it and your thumbs go "blah".
You're asking your thumbs to go back and enjoy tomato soup like they did back in the days when there was only tomato soup, only now they're more accustomed to gazpacho, borscht, and bloody marys.
Well, the way I read it, the problem wasn't that he choked storage with copies of the virus but that he screwed up in thinking that the phone system could handle all of these copies of the virus trying to make calls at once. He didn't realize the phone system was mechanical, for some reason, and couldn't handle a number of calls from a geometrically huge number of sources, all at once. Which is how the virus first got noticed. If I read the articles on the worm correctly.
But his mistake, in my opinion, wasn't writing the virus. I have to say and admit publicly, that I don't think RTM was ethically wrong in creating that hookworm and letting it free. See, he had already gone to people -- people in positions of authority -- who should have been more interested in what he was saying. And they failed to take much interest, and he was marginalized because of his efforts to do the right thing.
In the long run, we can measure the economic loss to the RTM worm in scant thousands of dollars in immediate cost. Projected costs, if we take into consideration that perhaps not being able to connect over the phone system to somebody in Massachusetts caused some broker to fuck up a $10,000,000 deal, we could add $10mil to it, but realistically it wasn't a huge fucking deal. Even calling it a m|stake begs qualification of the term, for the sake of clarifying the direction of the vector his mistake was scalar to.
I'd say the more important technical error was allowing every copy of the worm to attempt the connection without checking to see if the connection was already being made from that terminal, first.
I read a great article on RTM called "Shockwave Rider" or something like that. It was called that because RTM Sr. used the book "Shockwave Rider" to explain to his son how what he did was right in a certain way of looking at it, but wrong in every other way of looking at it. Can't remember what magazine the article was in. It was a good article to read back in the early 90's.
We still have a lot of mechanical devices hooked up to the internet, today. Some might say more every day. I say "mechanical devices" in reference to phones, because the exchange hubs used rotating disks (implementing their own optimized form of binary counting) to connect calls.
Considering we've had one major blackout in the United States due to a power station being online to the internet and left vulnerable, I'd say this is a very relevant topic today.
When I was taking a college course on transformers, the instructor used to come to class bragging about the work he did (his other job) for Siemens, designing and building transformers. He was a real egotist. He'd not only brag to students, but he wasn't very in touch with theory either, as I found out. Coming from electronics 101, you tend to want to ask some questions about electronics theory to your other instructors, stuff that they should by all means be well acquainted with. Well, this guy didn't know. So he'd get pissed, and when he got pissed, he would literally say, "oh yeah, well can you do this" and start writing out schematics for transformers according to code on the blackboard, and then take a calculator and figure out how many turns of what gauge wire was needed to fit the demand according to code. Yaba yaba yaba. A very insecure individual. So I not only wasn't surprised when I read in the newspaper that semester that Siemens transformers that had some kind of internet-capable component were found 100% irreversibly vulnerable to attack over the internet through a backdoor that presumably some disgruntled, insecure "mage" installed before leaving the company -- I also wasn't very surprised at all when that jackass had jack shit to say when I mentioned the story to him except stare at his shoes awhile and get on with the next lesson in rotating transformers (to use the Tesla coined phrase, which that instructor hated so damn much whenever I said it.)
Anyways, it's always going to be relevant. That hookworm was elegant and though not thoroughly thought through, it did show the potential for electronic disaster in the form of less than a handful of barely discernible on's and off's.
>> I've never met one person, my whole entire life, who felt that Daylight Savings Time should be maintained. Especially while I've lived in Michigan...
I should have corrected that to, "and the sentiment against DST is Especially strong in Michigan", because I was already speaking in an absolute term. I have never met anybody who supported DST and thought it was a meritable exercise, but I have met people who "never really thought about it". In Michigan, I've met very, very few people who don't have some strong opinions about Daylight Savings Time and how it needs to be put where the sun doesn't shine.
I always hear about how DST was about "giving farmers more daylight to get their farming done to keep America's breadbasket full".
That's so stupid. I've lived and worked on a farm. You tend to get up early enough that it's dark out any way. You tend to go to bed when the work is done whether it's still light out or not. We have electricity and light, these days. For the most part, work gets done early and you tend to go to bed while it's still partially light out, either out of exhaustion or because there's nothing to do and you'd like to be well rested for the morning. The clock often doesn't get switched to daylight saving's time until a day or two later when somebody gets back from town and remembers to mention the clocks are all different. Everybody's too busy to sit down and fiddle with their clocks. Daylight savings, whether forward or back, is immediately met with ridicule and complaint.
I've read about some really rustic farmers who still get up at "the crack of dawn", sandwiching wake-up somewhere between the rooster's call (which can be at 3am, you never know) and the beginning of sunrise, as long as a look out the window shows some light. I don't think they give a rat's ass about daylight savings time, either.
And if you aren't a farmer, how much does one hour of daylight savings save you? Save you in terms of what? Save you from a boring life where time is reliable and routine is, well, routine? I've never met one person, my whole entire life, who felt that Daylight Savings Time should be maintained. Especially while I've lived in Michigan, where the concept of daylight is sort of a joke. Nobody here in Michigan would care if the beginning and end of the day shifted back and forth, and in my opinion most people would be slightly more intelligent because they would benefit from a direct relationship with the real nature of astronomical time, of light and the effect it has on the seasons due to axial precession. Shifting the frame of reference back and forth robs people of this natural adjustment to their latitude, and attempts to stuff them into a weird and artificial day.
Granted, most people would just get up when they felt well rested and felt like doing things, and would just go out and hunt and gather, if left entirely to themselves. But, we work according to a clock. But shifting the clock back and forth under command does, as I pointed out, rob a person of the ability to experience the regular, back and forth shifting of natural light. I think people would find it very worthwhile to get to experience how driving to work at 8am means driving under a different ambient light at different times of year, and that the degree of change is different depending on what latitude they live in. It would be a decent trade-off for living on a clock.
It's public education we're talking about, so in all likelihood these children will also attend public (community) colleges as well.
This sort of testing will prepare them for the overpaid egotists who didn't make "professor" grade, and who take it out on students by giving them trick questions for simplistic subjects like intro cultural anthropology or intro electronics, or transformers and rotating machines, etc.
More importantly, they should be served the same *nutritious* glop day by day, to ensure that they don't die in custody of cruel and unusual treatment such as malnutrition.
I am 10,000% certain that nearly every food that is "popular" with institutional crowds is far from healthy.
You seem to be missing the point: the profiling is effective security. Are you saying that Americans should continue to Abhor things even if that attitude places them directly in harm's way, basically causing widespread cultural self-harm?
Get real, get brutal, get anything but in the way of progress. There's no time in the rapidly changing civilization we all have to suffer through, now, to stop and coddle people who don't feel right about the direction things are going.
There can't be any room for whiny idealists who aren't making any real or logical points, who are just torch-carriers for philosophies and politics that have failed, whose arguments are entirely emotional.
Do you need to see a wine list of all the people that you, too, can't stomach to consider as "people", to remind you of how wrong you're being? Or would you prefer to be treated as a person?
I certainly can't claim origin. I am just carrying on a philosophy / mentality that has been a "torch light" for the DIY / engineering community for decades.
I'm glad you see the merits in that simple statement. I'm also glad I was able to have my cognitive faculties intact enough to still produce a statement that concise.
You entire argument rests on the assumption that your bump key for your front door is secure.
Answer? Obviously, it isn't! All you are saying, here, is that you have PURCHASED an insecure system in lieur of a security system, that you know fully well its weaknesses and that it can (basically, let's admit it -- WILL) be defeated by easy to replicate means, and that your only HOPE is that law enforcement will discourage your predators.
I expect better debate than this out of Slashdot. Please don't respond if you aren't going to win the debate with your next words. Thanks but no thanks.
Just realized that the original Kelley (sp) rendition of Bones McCoy also tended to set off my gaydar. So, I guess the new McCoy is closer on that I figured -- hey, what do you know. I just referred to him as "the new McCoy". Guess some of those character flaws are more subtle than we might think.
Well, come on, maybe it's not a holodeck. Maybe it's a holographic projector in a room fitted with 4 wall-sized PMOLED screens.
They even showed the "rustic" projector rigs jutting out of the walls. TNG didn't give us that, just gave us dialogue expecting us to suspend disbelief.
I don't think it's fair to call what Kirk was enjoying a "holodeck".
I'm interested in seeing whether the writers can show restraint in maintaining it as a degraded technology.
Other missed it, but to me, it was a subtle dig at the TNG writers. The "Continued" writers included this prototype of something leading up to the holodeck, but then they left it behind and didn't bring it up again in the same episode, at all, whatsoever.
Tell me, what technologies introduced in TNG or its spin-offs were just throw-away introductions that didn't somehow deal into the plot? Including in that notoriously crutch-like way?
I think that by bringing in this primitive holodeck precursor and then not mentioning it again, they were doing two things:
1) Acknowledging the mistakes TNG made in relying heavily on the holodeck as an ever-present antagonistic threat to the Enterprise and crew
2) Laughing it off by doing the exact opposite of what TNG did.
I wouldn't be surprised if the writers didn't plan to mention this holodeck precursor again in the series, except maybe as a nearly humouristic element in a single episode. Certainly not the recurring, weird-assed, existential problem the 1701-D faced so often.
Quality of work. CBS isn't dipshit-stupid and/or staffed primarily by angsty geeks who rarely get outside of their real or figurative boxes, so I'm sure they saw the merits of the show and felt it deserved to "pass".
I mean, come on. The story was fucking phenomenal.
They took one moment out, one tiny moment, to (retcon or not to retcon, hmm, depends on which fans you ask apparently) some tech into the universe.
Then, did you not notice, they didn't use it at all? The rest of the show was largely practical effects and these magical things called writing and acting and...... wait. Basically, you saw that there was a holodeck being invented, found that to be somehow implausible in a totally fictitious universe, and decided not to continue to enjoy the show.
Listen: you need to get out of your house. STAR TREK ISN'T REAL. ALSO, VIETNAM IS OVER.
Well, if we had a holographic projector worth mentioning in our time in our life, I bet we would not consider it to be anywhere near a holodeck.
And if we made it into a room with an "immersive" 4-walled background image and/or film to accompany the holograph, I bet we would still not quite consider it a holodeck by TNG standards.
I do hope, though, that they don't go too far with the capabilities of the holodeck in "Continued". I like the aesthetic of a still background image and too-sharp images with everything in focus coming from the holographs.
I never did understand the holodecks from TNG, how they could get lost in these holodeck worlds when they're all really just a few meters away from one another. I even had the official book that's supposed to be diagrams and explanations of the technology in the series, as well as the same book for TOS. Holodecks, I can assure anyone, were never really explained. So I have a problem with holodecks as sinister plot devices to begin with.
I don't feel like the acting is weak. Allow me to delve into details.
Spock's nasal voice instead of the deep register we've come to expect from Nimoy struck me as "off". I immediately expected that I would come to find it annoying. However, the actor faithfully captures the Vulcan's calm, direct demeanor. I chalked the nasally, nerdish voice of Spock's actor up to an "interesting actor flaw".
Then there's McCoy. I could easily imagine Kelly sitting down with a nice young girl or two in the woods, playing acoustic guitar. He was kind of one of those rustic hippy sort of personalities. Grating and sensible, but romantic and passionate. Yeah, well, this new guy is a tad overweight and smacks a tad of "gay". However, I think he perfectly captures the McCoy character. We can chalk up what's lacking to Kelly's interpretation. This new guy delivers perfect deadpan, which is pretty important for McCoy's sarcastic and wise wit.
Kirk was a good Kirk. As others noticed, he obviously studied the hell out of the part.
Scotty's, well, original Scotty's son apparently. He obviously enjoys the part and puts a lot of emotion into it. He almost looks like he's going to break into tears out of love for his precious Enterprise and the illogical and unnecessary danger she's being put in. He's the consummate engineer.
And there's Sulu. That guy delivers with so much arm-swinging gumption it's hilarious, but he keeps it so muted! He never crosses the line into cheese-land! And did you see him almost cracking up on the bridge? It's obvious that Sulu's actor will be able to deliver with just as much subdued grinning as the original.
Uhura obviously loves her part, as well. She really shined during her delivery in the opening of the "rec room 6" scene. I think the way she held herself on her forward foot was a slight bit ungraceful, but wow, what shoes to fill. The original actress for Uhura was a real smooth woman. I think this girl does great, most importantly she gets into the part. Maybe when her hair gets longer, she'll put it into a more 70's do.
Everybody else was pretty much carbon copy of the original.
Somebody mentioned the sets being CGId to look plastic-textured. I beg to differ. I think some of those sets were built with a lot of plastic. It's not like they don't have access to it -- obviously they built the space suits. The hallway leading to the recreation room, check out those joist panels coming down from the ceiling. That hallway is definitely built.
The lighting was really picturesque, too. No moment was wasted with washed-out effects.
Personally, having seen the recent big-budget reboots with all the camera lens flare covering everything up, and having seen this other fan-made thing "Phase II" that seems to prefer dark and blurry shots, I think there's apparently a sort of guilt complex hazard in making a remake of such a famous show. I'm sure the directors feel like they can't live up to it and so the lens flares and blurs and darkness are supposed to offer the audience a chance to suspend disbelief for fleeting moments.
That approach doesn't work for me. This approach that "Continues" is using, where everything is well-lit and filmed in classical style, it spot-on. It allows them to go a step further and showcase that actual thing called The Writing.
I went and took a look, because I'd love to shore up both sides of a pointless argument.
Sorry, but all arguments aside, nothing about the presentation of "Phase II" impressed me. It seemed kind of blazed-out or something, with cinematography reminiscent of a psychedelic shoegazer music video, poor casting, poor writing, and inconfident acting. Though they did do better choosing voice actors (apparently), it's a television show, not a radio drama.
You have to admit that the pilot for "Continues" was dead-on, and great writing, and that this "Phase II" is over-camped.
Wow, this, was really, really, really, really good. Like read in other comments, I have to say that I expected much, much less than what was presented. But it became apparent after the first few moments that any fears of bad acting or casting could be forgotten, and once the big reveal at the end of the first scene was concluded, I realized that the writing might possibly be good, as well. After seeing the whole episode, I have to say that the writing is absolutely spectacular. What a great episode!
I can only hope that every episode has a cameo. I would in particular LOVE to see Jane Wiedlin (original guitarist of the Go-Gos, played the crazy-haired woman broadcasting from Earth in "The Voyage Home") in an episode. Hell, I'd love to see her as a regular cast member. And of course it would be interesting to see George Takei.
What a great concept and so well executed. I can't wait to figure out how to give them my feedback. Annoyingly, the YouTube comments are turned off. I guess it's kind of apparent that nobody wants to hear what the average YouTube viewer has to say about shit. (Most of the really high quality things I find on YouTube turn comments off.)
I used to be a staunch defender of the right of a person to "hack" under the broadest possible set of definitions for the term "hacker".
"Hacker": 1. A DIY person. 2. An unlicensed repairperson. 3. A person with the needed skills for a situation. 4. An umbrella term conglomerate with the skills of computer programming or scripting, phreaking, cracking, and a host of other skills involving physics, radio usage, metallurgy, anything under the sun, when those skills are applied in a unique fashion.
And the debate is SO old. When I came on the scene in 1992, the debate was SO old.
DIY / engineering people wanted to reserve the term "hacker" with a presumed innocence, so they could call themselves and their friends "hackers".
And, basically, get away with it. Which I add, because the popular term is nothing like the term preferred by the DIY / engineering crowd who enjoy the use of the term.
In popular culture, "hacker" is a purely criminal term. And that includes law enforcement culture and the rest of the legal system.
Fighting the negative might seem like a jolly ride, but consider what you're ultimately doing to yourself by applying that label.
Now, in my life, personally, I stopped using the term for myself after, I dunno, high school? Thereabouts? Because, what's the point of applying the term, or of putting up the fight? Where in the spirit of DIY / engineering, does it say "oh, you should incriminate yourself in front of others, probably for the benefit of nothing more than looking cool and some desperately hoped-for but unlikely street cred."
Then, when I got to college, I found that telling people I'm pursuing a degree in computer engineering led to this statement (or a derivation thereof): "oh, you're a hacker!"
And no, they didn't mean "you're part of the ultra-hip, super-cool DIY / engineering squad of citizens who can do some McGyver shit and who stands up for causes like the misappropriations of terms by mainstream culture! Far out!"
They meant, "oh, wow, I bet you'd like if it I called you a 'hacker' right now, you fucking geek. God, if I was half as smart as you, I think I'd already be in prison. Here's hoping that you'll take the bait and open your stupid cocksucker like a real jabroni."
Or, sometimes, if they're really fucking stupid, they meant, "wow, that Hacking movie I watched last night is STILL kicking in with all this caffeine I can't stop ingesting. I hate my course of study and it bores the shit out of me, so I'll glorify this person's field of study and excite myself vicariously through that exchange, using my imagery from the movie I watched that also excited the hell out of my excitable, stimulant-addled ass. I'll be killing two birds with one frantic stone, I think! Maybe the person really IS a hacker! At the very least, I'll be able to suspend disbelief in Hollywood for a few more hours, perhaps even days!"
In either case, because you're not talking to a fellow member of the small segment of the population who fit in the DIY / Engineer / verbally jousting defender of the proper use and innocence of the term "hacker" / geek crowd, you're getting one of those two social situations, above. Take your pick.
Now, that's just in the context of running into social peers in the amazing world of "higher learning". Let's see what happens when an officer of the law, or a lawyer, or a judge, or a prosecutor, or a victim of computer crime asks if you're a hacker. What they really mean is:
"Are you one of these space-age freaks who's abusing their high priesthood secret knowledge of how the magical computer works, in order to redirect our credit, steal our identities, crack our passwords, read our email, threaten and or blackmail us, watch our laptop webcams, blow up our smart toasters, and to otherwise exploit our weaknesses?"
And the thing is, THAT is the majority of the popula
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, obviously I was misinformed about the use of "-san". But, I don't have a very deep or vested in interest in Japanese language or culture.
Reader, ignore my comments on the use of "-san". Others here have fleshed it out more accurately.
"san" just shows familiarity and endearment. Sometimes it's used ironically, or sometimes just to be familiar without the endearment attached.
Kishimoto is the guy's personal name, and Yoshihisa is the guy's family name.
The Japanese animation style is up for opinion. In my opinion it's meant to be drawn quickly and with a high level of conformity. This way you get similar quality across numerous hours of animation, with not much effort. "Cel shading" is used to give the most effect of depth and light with the least amount of effort and the smallest possibly palette of inks.
Also, again on the style, often Japanese animators like to include elements of "manga" comic drawing into their animated forms. "Manga" was designed around imparting the greatest sense of action, space (depth) and emotion possible using the least number of drawings and frames. Animators will sometimes use manga techniques just for a "roots" appeal, or sometimes because it would be more quick and effective to use a cartoonish looking manga image even in the middle of a "realist" animated sequence. This isn't always done just to save time drawing or to save ink -- typically it's done to maintain a speedy pace of the narrative, or to lend a character a diminutive cast by suddenly drawing them as a comic throwback in the midst of characters who are maintaining themselves better (and drawn in a cel-shaded, realist setting).
The resulting aesthetic has come to be loved and enjoyed by people around the world.
What techniques would you prefer they use? Do you prefer all of your animations rotoscoped or something?
Part of the appeal of River City Ransom is just how much content -- quality content, much of it -- they packed into this little side-scrolling beat-em-up.
There are even weird hidden wonders like, if the enemy throws a baseball at your head but you deflect it with a stick, IT'S ON -- Stickball time, and you and the enemies get into formation and play a damn game of stickball.
And, it's a beat-em-up with role playing elements like items, skills, and stats. There are some other games like that for the same system (Little Ninja Brothers for example, with its Kung Fu Heroes style battle screens) but this game is modern and admittedly slick.
So, consider how powerful that was back in the 8-bit days, and consider how that still resonates as a "good game" today.
How in the hell do you capture that, again? You might say "well they are taking a good step in the right direction by retro-styling it as 8-bit", but is that all it is?
Think of it dynamically: there is potentially so much *more* that could be done with the game, today. This is the same problem all devs face when they're planning a franchise reboot from the 8-bit days to the modern, post-3d-playforming days. The devs have to ask "how much space of the new world of gaming should this game occupy".
I'm not saying that making RCR into a cartoonish Grand Theft Auto is going to somehow improve it, either. I'm saying that the envelope has changed.
The original game was explosive because it packed all of that game into that tiny 8-bit envelope, when there was nothing else to work with. Now, there's tons of other stuff to work with. You can still pack just as much game into just as small of a bit width, but the envelope is so much bigger, now, there's not going to be as much explosive force.
It's the big let down of retro-styled gaming. It seems like such an awesome idea to make more 8-bit games, as if the legacy didn't leave enough of them behind, but then you sit down and play it and your thumbs go "blah".
You're asking your thumbs to go back and enjoy tomato soup like they did back in the days when there was only tomato soup, only now they're more accustomed to gazpacho, borscht, and bloody marys.
Well, the way I read it, the problem wasn't that he choked storage with copies of the virus but that he screwed up in thinking that the phone system could handle all of these copies of the virus trying to make calls at once. He didn't realize the phone system was mechanical, for some reason, and couldn't handle a number of calls from a geometrically huge number of sources, all at once. Which is how the virus first got noticed. If I read the articles on the worm correctly.
But his mistake, in my opinion, wasn't writing the virus. I have to say and admit publicly, that I don't think RTM was ethically wrong in creating that hookworm and letting it free. See, he had already gone to people -- people in positions of authority -- who should have been more interested in what he was saying. And they failed to take much interest, and he was marginalized because of his efforts to do the right thing.
In the long run, we can measure the economic loss to the RTM worm in scant thousands of dollars in immediate cost. Projected costs, if we take into consideration that perhaps not being able to connect over the phone system to somebody in Massachusetts caused some broker to fuck up a $10,000,000 deal, we could add $10mil to it, but realistically it wasn't a huge fucking deal. Even calling it a m|stake begs qualification of the term, for the sake of clarifying the direction of the vector his mistake was scalar to.
I'd say the more important technical error was allowing every copy of the worm to attempt the connection without checking to see if the connection was already being made from that terminal, first.
I read a great article on RTM called "Shockwave Rider" or something like that. It was called that because RTM Sr. used the book "Shockwave Rider" to explain to his son how what he did was right in a certain way of looking at it, but wrong in every other way of looking at it. Can't remember what magazine the article was in. It was a good article to read back in the early 90's.
We still have a lot of mechanical devices hooked up to the internet, today. Some might say more every day. I say "mechanical devices" in reference to phones, because the exchange hubs used rotating disks (implementing their own optimized form of binary counting) to connect calls.
Considering we've had one major blackout in the United States due to a power station being online to the internet and left vulnerable, I'd say this is a very relevant topic today.
When I was taking a college course on transformers, the instructor used to come to class bragging about the work he did (his other job) for Siemens, designing and building transformers. He was a real egotist. He'd not only brag to students, but he wasn't very in touch with theory either, as I found out. Coming from electronics 101, you tend to want to ask some questions about electronics theory to your other instructors, stuff that they should by all means be well acquainted with. Well, this guy didn't know. So he'd get pissed, and when he got pissed, he would literally say, "oh yeah, well can you do this" and start writing out schematics for transformers according to code on the blackboard, and then take a calculator and figure out how many turns of what gauge wire was needed to fit the demand according to code. Yaba yaba yaba. A very insecure individual. So I not only wasn't surprised when I read in the newspaper that semester that Siemens transformers that had some kind of internet-capable component were found 100% irreversibly vulnerable to attack over the internet through a backdoor that presumably some disgruntled, insecure "mage" installed before leaving the company -- I also wasn't very surprised at all when that jackass had jack shit to say when I mentioned the story to him except stare at his shoes awhile and get on with the next lesson in rotating transformers (to use the Tesla coined phrase, which that instructor hated so damn much whenever I said it.)
Anyways, it's always going to be relevant. That hookworm was elegant and though not thoroughly thought through, it did show the potential for electronic disaster in the form of less than a handful of barely discernible on's and off's.
>> I've never met one person, my whole entire life, who felt that Daylight Savings Time should be maintained. Especially while I've lived in Michigan...
I should have corrected that to, "and the sentiment against DST is Especially strong in Michigan", because I was already speaking in an absolute term. I have never met anybody who supported DST and thought it was a meritable exercise, but I have met people who "never really thought about it". In Michigan, I've met very, very few people who don't have some strong opinions about Daylight Savings Time and how it needs to be put where the sun doesn't shine.
I always hear about how DST was about "giving farmers more daylight to get their farming done to keep America's breadbasket full".
That's so stupid. I've lived and worked on a farm. You tend to get up early enough that it's dark out any way. You tend to go to bed when the work is done whether it's still light out or not. We have electricity and light, these days. For the most part, work gets done early and you tend to go to bed while it's still partially light out, either out of exhaustion or because there's nothing to do and you'd like to be well rested for the morning. The clock often doesn't get switched to daylight saving's time until a day or two later when somebody gets back from town and remembers to mention the clocks are all different. Everybody's too busy to sit down and fiddle with their clocks. Daylight savings, whether forward or back, is immediately met with ridicule and complaint.
I've read about some really rustic farmers who still get up at "the crack of dawn", sandwiching wake-up somewhere between the rooster's call (which can be at 3am, you never know) and the beginning of sunrise, as long as a look out the window shows some light. I don't think they give a rat's ass about daylight savings time, either.
And if you aren't a farmer, how much does one hour of daylight savings save you? Save you in terms of what? Save you from a boring life where time is reliable and routine is, well, routine? I've never met one person, my whole entire life, who felt that Daylight Savings Time should be maintained. Especially while I've lived in Michigan, where the concept of daylight is sort of a joke. Nobody here in Michigan would care if the beginning and end of the day shifted back and forth, and in my opinion most people would be slightly more intelligent because they would benefit from a direct relationship with the real nature of astronomical time, of light and the effect it has on the seasons due to axial precession. Shifting the frame of reference back and forth robs people of this natural adjustment to their latitude, and attempts to stuff them into a weird and artificial day.
Granted, most people would just get up when they felt well rested and felt like doing things, and would just go out and hunt and gather, if left entirely to themselves. But, we work according to a clock. But shifting the clock back and forth under command does, as I pointed out, rob a person of the ability to experience the regular, back and forth shifting of natural light. I think people would find it very worthwhile to get to experience how driving to work at 8am means driving under a different ambient light at different times of year, and that the degree of change is different depending on what latitude they live in. It would be a decent trade-off for living on a clock.
Why? What's wrong with trick questions?
It's public education we're talking about, so in all likelihood these children will also attend public (community) colleges as well.
This sort of testing will prepare them for the overpaid egotists who didn't make "professor" grade, and who take it out on students by giving them trick questions for simplistic subjects like intro cultural anthropology or intro electronics, or transformers and rotating machines, etc.
More importantly, they should be served the same *nutritious* glop day by day, to ensure that they don't die in custody of cruel and unusual treatment such as malnutrition.
I am 10,000% certain that nearly every food that is "popular" with institutional crowds is far from healthy.
You seem to be missing the point: the profiling is effective security. Are you saying that Americans should continue to Abhor things even if that attitude places them directly in harm's way, basically causing widespread cultural self-harm?
Get real, get brutal, get anything but in the way of progress. There's no time in the rapidly changing civilization we all have to suffer through, now, to stop and coddle people who don't feel right about the direction things are going.
There can't be any room for whiny idealists who aren't making any real or logical points, who are just torch-carriers for philosophies and politics that have failed, whose arguments are entirely emotional.
Do you need to see a wine list of all the people that you, too, can't stomach to consider as "people", to remind you of how wrong you're being? Or would you prefer to be treated as a person?
Can I stop barfing, yet? It's starting to burn my nose.
I certainly can't claim origin. I am just carrying on a philosophy / mentality that has been a "torch light" for the DIY / engineering community for decades.
I'm glad you see the merits in that simple statement. I'm also glad I was able to have my cognitive faculties intact enough to still produce a statement that concise.
You entire argument rests on the assumption that your bump key for your front door is secure.
Answer? Obviously, it isn't! All you are saying, here, is that you have PURCHASED an insecure system in lieur of a security system, that you know fully well its weaknesses and that it can (basically, let's admit it -- WILL) be defeated by easy to replicate means, and that your only HOPE is that law enforcement will discourage your predators.
I expect better debate than this out of Slashdot. Please don't respond if you aren't going to win the debate with your next words. Thanks but no thanks.
Just realized that the original Kelley (sp) rendition of Bones McCoy also tended to set off my gaydar. So, I guess the new McCoy is closer on that I figured -- hey, what do you know. I just referred to him as "the new McCoy". Guess some of those character flaws are more subtle than we might think.
Well, come on, maybe it's not a holodeck. Maybe it's a holographic projector in a room fitted with 4 wall-sized PMOLED screens.
They even showed the "rustic" projector rigs jutting out of the walls. TNG didn't give us that, just gave us dialogue expecting us to suspend disbelief.
I don't think it's fair to call what Kirk was enjoying a "holodeck".
I'm interested in seeing whether the writers can show restraint in maintaining it as a degraded technology.
Other missed it, but to me, it was a subtle dig at the TNG writers. The "Continued" writers included this prototype of something leading up to the holodeck, but then they left it behind and didn't bring it up again in the same episode, at all, whatsoever.
Tell me, what technologies introduced in TNG or its spin-offs were just throw-away introductions that didn't somehow deal into the plot? Including in that notoriously crutch-like way?
I think that by bringing in this primitive holodeck precursor and then not mentioning it again, they were doing two things:
1) Acknowledging the mistakes TNG made in relying heavily on the holodeck as an ever-present antagonistic threat to the Enterprise and crew
2) Laughing it off by doing the exact opposite of what TNG did.
I wouldn't be surprised if the writers didn't plan to mention this holodeck precursor again in the series, except maybe as a nearly humouristic element in a single episode. Certainly not the recurring, weird-assed, existential problem the 1701-D faced so often.
Quality of work. CBS isn't dipshit-stupid and/or staffed primarily by angsty geeks who rarely get outside of their real or figurative boxes, so I'm sure they saw the merits of the show and felt it deserved to "pass".
*facepalm out of embarassment for you*
I mean, come on. The story was fucking phenomenal.
They took one moment out, one tiny moment, to (retcon or not to retcon, hmm, depends on which fans you ask apparently) some tech into the universe.
Then, did you not notice, they didn't use it at all? The rest of the show was largely practical effects and these magical things called writing and acting and ... ... wait. Basically, you saw that there was a holodeck being invented, found that to be somehow implausible in a totally fictitious universe, and decided not to continue to enjoy the show.
Listen: you need to get out of your house. STAR TREK ISN'T REAL. ALSO, VIETNAM IS OVER.
Hmm.
Well, if we had a holographic projector worth mentioning in our time in our life, I bet we would not consider it to be anywhere near a holodeck.
And if we made it into a room with an "immersive" 4-walled background image and/or film to accompany the holograph, I bet we would still not quite consider it a holodeck by TNG standards.
I do hope, though, that they don't go too far with the capabilities of the holodeck in "Continued". I like the aesthetic of a still background image and too-sharp images with everything in focus coming from the holographs.
I never did understand the holodecks from TNG, how they could get lost in these holodeck worlds when they're all really just a few meters away from one another. I even had the official book that's supposed to be diagrams and explanations of the technology in the series, as well as the same book for TOS. Holodecks, I can assure anyone, were never really explained. So I have a problem with holodecks as sinister plot devices to begin with.
Hell -- it was news to me!
Unless you were clairvoyant, it was news to you, too.
I don't feel like the acting is weak. Allow me to delve into details.
Spock's nasal voice instead of the deep register we've come to expect from Nimoy struck me as "off". I immediately expected that I would come to find it annoying. However, the actor faithfully captures the Vulcan's calm, direct demeanor. I chalked the nasally, nerdish voice of Spock's actor up to an "interesting actor flaw".
Then there's McCoy. I could easily imagine Kelly sitting down with a nice young girl or two in the woods, playing acoustic guitar. He was kind of one of those rustic hippy sort of personalities. Grating and sensible, but romantic and passionate. Yeah, well, this new guy is a tad overweight and smacks a tad of "gay". However, I think he perfectly captures the McCoy character. We can chalk up what's lacking to Kelly's interpretation. This new guy delivers perfect deadpan, which is pretty important for McCoy's sarcastic and wise wit.
Kirk was a good Kirk. As others noticed, he obviously studied the hell out of the part.
Scotty's, well, original Scotty's son apparently. He obviously enjoys the part and puts a lot of emotion into it. He almost looks like he's going to break into tears out of love for his precious Enterprise and the illogical and unnecessary danger she's being put in. He's the consummate engineer.
And there's Sulu. That guy delivers with so much arm-swinging gumption it's hilarious, but he keeps it so muted! He never crosses the line into cheese-land! And did you see him almost cracking up on the bridge? It's obvious that Sulu's actor will be able to deliver with just as much subdued grinning as the original.
Uhura obviously loves her part, as well. She really shined during her delivery in the opening of the "rec room 6" scene. I think the way she held herself on her forward foot was a slight bit ungraceful, but wow, what shoes to fill. The original actress for Uhura was a real smooth woman. I think this girl does great, most importantly she gets into the part. Maybe when her hair gets longer, she'll put it into a more 70's do.
Everybody else was pretty much carbon copy of the original.
Somebody mentioned the sets being CGId to look plastic-textured. I beg to differ. I think some of those sets were built with a lot of plastic. It's not like they don't have access to it -- obviously they built the space suits. The hallway leading to the recreation room, check out those joist panels coming down from the ceiling. That hallway is definitely built.
The lighting was really picturesque, too. No moment was wasted with washed-out effects.
Personally, having seen the recent big-budget reboots with all the camera lens flare covering everything up, and having seen this other fan-made thing "Phase II" that seems to prefer dark and blurry shots, I think there's apparently a sort of guilt complex hazard in making a remake of such a famous show. I'm sure the directors feel like they can't live up to it and so the lens flares and blurs and darkness are supposed to offer the audience a chance to suspend disbelief for fleeting moments.
That approach doesn't work for me. This approach that "Continues" is using, where everything is well-lit and filmed in classical style, it spot-on. It allows them to go a step further and showcase that actual thing called The Writing.
I went and took a look, because I'd love to shore up both sides of a pointless argument.
Sorry, but all arguments aside, nothing about the presentation of "Phase II" impressed me. It seemed kind of blazed-out or something, with cinematography reminiscent of a psychedelic shoegazer music video, poor casting, poor writing, and inconfident acting. Though they did do better choosing voice actors (apparently), it's a television show, not a radio drama.
You have to admit that the pilot for "Continues" was dead-on, and great writing, and that this "Phase II" is over-camped.
Wow, this, was really, really, really, really good. Like read in other comments, I have to say that I expected much, much less than what was presented. But it became apparent after the first few moments that any fears of bad acting or casting could be forgotten, and once the big reveal at the end of the first scene was concluded, I realized that the writing might possibly be good, as well. After seeing the whole episode, I have to say that the writing is absolutely spectacular. What a great episode!
I can only hope that every episode has a cameo. I would in particular LOVE to see Jane Wiedlin (original guitarist of the Go-Gos, played the crazy-haired woman broadcasting from Earth in "The Voyage Home") in an episode. Hell, I'd love to see her as a regular cast member. And of course it would be interesting to see George Takei.
What a great concept and so well executed. I can't wait to figure out how to give them my feedback. Annoyingly, the YouTube comments are turned off. I guess it's kind of apparent that nobody wants to hear what the average YouTube viewer has to say about shit. (Most of the really high quality things I find on YouTube turn comments off.)
I used to be a staunch defender of the right of a person to "hack" under the broadest possible set of definitions for the term "hacker".
"Hacker": 1. A DIY person. 2. An unlicensed repairperson. 3. A person with the needed skills for a situation. 4. An umbrella term conglomerate with the skills of computer programming or scripting, phreaking, cracking, and a host of other skills involving physics, radio usage, metallurgy, anything under the sun, when those skills are applied in a unique fashion.
and then there's the popular definition:
"Hacker" (2) 1. A computer criminal: identity thief, password cracker, malware author.
And the debate is SO old. When I came on the scene in 1992, the debate was SO old.
DIY / engineering people wanted to reserve the term "hacker" with a presumed innocence, so they could call themselves and their friends "hackers".
And, basically, get away with it. Which I add, because the popular term is nothing like the term preferred by the DIY / engineering crowd who enjoy the use of the term.
In popular culture, "hacker" is a purely criminal term. And that includes law enforcement culture and the rest of the legal system.
Fighting the negative might seem like a jolly ride, but consider what you're ultimately doing to yourself by applying that label.
Now, in my life, personally, I stopped using the term for myself after, I dunno, high school? Thereabouts? Because, what's the point of applying the term, or of putting up the fight? Where in the spirit of DIY / engineering, does it say "oh, you should incriminate yourself in front of others, probably for the benefit of nothing more than looking cool and some desperately hoped-for but unlikely street cred."
Then, when I got to college, I found that telling people I'm pursuing a degree in computer engineering led to this statement (or a derivation thereof): "oh, you're a hacker!"
And no, they didn't mean "you're part of the ultra-hip, super-cool DIY / engineering squad of citizens who can do some McGyver shit and who stands up for causes like the misappropriations of terms by mainstream culture! Far out!"
They meant, "oh, wow, I bet you'd like if it I called you a 'hacker' right now, you fucking geek. God, if I was half as smart as you, I think I'd already be in prison. Here's hoping that you'll take the bait and open your stupid cocksucker like a real jabroni."
Or, sometimes, if they're really fucking stupid, they meant, "wow, that Hacking movie I watched last night is STILL kicking in with all this caffeine I can't stop ingesting. I hate my course of study and it bores the shit out of me, so I'll glorify this person's field of study and excite myself vicariously through that exchange, using my imagery from the movie I watched that also excited the hell out of my excitable, stimulant-addled ass. I'll be killing two birds with one frantic stone, I think! Maybe the person really IS a hacker! At the very least, I'll be able to suspend disbelief in Hollywood for a few more hours, perhaps even days!"
In either case, because you're not talking to a fellow member of the small segment of the population who fit in the DIY / Engineer / verbally jousting defender of the proper use and innocence of the term "hacker" / geek crowd, you're getting one of those two social situations, above. Take your pick.
Now, that's just in the context of running into social peers in the amazing world of "higher learning". Let's see what happens when an officer of the law, or a lawyer, or a judge, or a prosecutor, or a victim of computer crime asks if you're a hacker. What they really mean is:
"Are you one of these space-age freaks who's abusing their high priesthood secret knowledge of how the magical computer works, in order to redirect our credit, steal our identities, crack our passwords, read our email, threaten and or blackmail us, watch our laptop webcams, blow up our smart toasters, and to otherwise exploit our weaknesses?"
And the thing is, THAT is the majority of the popula