Was it more annoying than watching that borefest of a movie? I swear, nothing ever happens in that whole movie.
It's known as "The Slow-Motion Picture" for a reason. Still, I am fond of the film for various reasons. It represents the few surviving elements of the "Phase II" show, it is one of the few times when Star Trek both had a decent budget and took a stab at some real "science fiction" (not hard SF, mind you, but at least it was largely dedicated to the idea of exploring and confronting the unknown) - it is a point in time when the original crew, while older, hadn't yet shriveled up entirely... And, of course, it brought us the "Enterprise Refit" - quite possibly the loveliest studio miniature ever constructed... Not to mention the K'Tinga, which got altogether too little appreciation IMO, winding up in the shadow of the "Klingon" Bird of Prey of the later films... Plus there's something about the era that I enjoy... the late-1970s sci-fi films...
But, yes, large tracts of that movie are dreadfully boring. As a model-maker, I love the Refit Enterprise model - and so I enjoy their extended fly-by sequence of it... But damn is that bit boring if you're not in it for the models. And worse, the original cut had all those klaxons going off all the time, various unfinished effects (wormhole asteroid, for instance? And I'd wager there was a real-world reason why they couldn't use the phasers.) - they say the production wound up rather rushed... which is a shame, because we all know how that played out in the resulting film.
You know, when I think of action games with customizable battle robots, there's one title that leaps straight to mind...
Armored Core
For sure, another game with that kind of customizability is a good thing, and it sets the game apart from many other games... But MW is certainly not the only case of this...
It seems like even you didn't get the reference...
This was a code you could type into Mechwarrior 2. Once you entered the code, a plane would fly overhead and drops a nuclear bomb, destroying everything (including you).
The two men, known by the online nicknames "Netkairo" and "Ostiator," were arrested in February by Spanish police for their alleged role in running the "Mariposa" botnet, a malware distribution platform that spread malicious software to more than 12 million Internet addresses from 190 countries (mariposa is Spanish for "butterfly").
I'm sorry, was the definition of mariposa relevant somehow?
This is the core problem with your auto analogy. DRM isn't something people use to protect their stuff. It's something they use to protect other people's stuff.
I was going to compare it to lojack, but that's still something the owner of the car is still ostensibly in control of. Nor can you compare it to lojack on a rental car because DVDs aren't rentals, you bought and own the content. But you aren't the one with the keys to the lock.
It depends how you define property and possession, naturally.
Whether or not you believe in the idea of intellectual property, it is, in fact, law. If you buy a DVD of the movie "Iron Man", you don't own the movie "Iron Man". The people who own the movie have the right to control, to some extent, what is done with it. And that is the protection which DRM provides.
It is like saying if I put a Ferrari engine in a Chevy Suburban, it will perform as well as if i put it in a Ferrari.
Another way of putting it might be to say that, while both vehicles would then use the same engine, the Ferrari uses code structure recognition heuristics to optimize the sequence of calls it makes to the engine, while the Chevy takes a simpler approach to generating its sequence of calls.
I may not have made a very good analogy at all, I'm afraid...
This is not true, in my experience. Both MATLAB and Python (numpy/scipy) use the same underlying math libraries. MATLAB often optimized for windows PCs, but numpy/scipy offer the option to optimize for your C64, or whatever, with libraries like ATLAS.
I believe in source-level portability and all, but even if I could run Python on my C64 I don't think it'd be worth the trouble...
If "no math operations are defined," why is anyone surprised when subtraction fails?
-JS
If one is reading the manual, then no, it's not surprising that you can't subtract two INT64's. If one is applying the same expectations to Matlab that they'd apply to other software, then yes, it is surprising that they'd support a particular numerical representation but not give you facilities to actually use it.
I think I understand the basic reasoning behind the decision - MATLAB isn't a tool for working in the integer space, it's a tool for working in the real and complex numerical spaces... But still, there was a point in time when I simply noticed Matlab supported integer data types and thought I'd use them. When I wrote a data importer lib for the Matlab environment and thought I'd be clever and represent integer data with the integer types - I learned my lesson. Don't. MATLAB can't do anything useful with integer types except convert them to double, so it's a lot more useful to just convert them to double in the first place.
Re:Ninjas were assassins, not peasants
on
The Laidoff Ninja
·
· Score: 2, Funny
It said the first ninjas were peasants, not all of them. Do you have an alternative history of their origins you would like to present?
Well, the Oedipus arc in the original "The Tick" comic covers it pretty well, I'd say...
Dude, just bear with me. It's an analogy... involving a car... I think you'll find that DRM has a number of similarities to a car door:
People use it to protect their stuff (contents of car, or profit potential of their copyrighted material)
It's not much of a hurdle for a serious intruder (thief can smash your window or break your lock... copyright infringer can take the time to crack the encryption scheme)
Its effectiveness lies primarily in the fact that it dissuades casual abuse rather than serious attacks.
I get your point, that DRM has practical problems. To map that back onto my analogy, it is possible to lock oneself out of one's car - but DRM would be more like a sometimes-faulty lock.
But it's not as though that's all DRM does. Even if it's relatively easy to defeat (just as the best lock in the world doesn't help you if you can just break a window) - the fact that there's any security at all dissuades a large number of people who might otherwise walk all over copyright law without giving it a thought.
I agree that the situation sucks - I just thought Bearhouse's statement seemed to indicate that DRM was good for nothing apart from punishing legitimate customers. I don't believe that's true.
Well, it's like a lock on a car door: it keeps honest people honest. It doesn't stop the people who want to steal your car radio, GPS, etc., but it stops all the people who might be willing to just reach inside and take something off your car seat.
Is it just me or does this seem like an odd perspective to this story?
I thought that the Civil War technology to make die out of Pokeberries was about the least interesting part of the story
So wait...
there's civil war technology which people are killing off with Pokeberries? Or did someone in the civil war era figure out how to use Pokeberries to make molds and similar toolings for casting?
I can't decide if I should make a pokemon joke, or a your mom joke.
No, not a pokemon joke, just a type of berry...
Honestly, though, it's hard to imagine coming out ahead. I mean, to cultivate the berries you have to fly from town to town, finding small patches of soil where you can plant a berry or two, then you need to keep coming back every few hours to water the damn things or the soil will dry up and the berries will die. All this and maybe in a couple days that berry you planted will sprout into a bush with, what, two or three berries on it? And then as soon as you pick 'em, the plant dies and you have to start over. It's a really annoying system.
Slashdot Mirror
Was it more annoying than watching that borefest of a movie? I swear, nothing ever happens in that whole movie.
It's known as "The Slow-Motion Picture" for a reason. Still, I am fond of the film for various reasons. It represents the few surviving elements of the "Phase II" show, it is one of the few times when Star Trek both had a decent budget and took a stab at some real "science fiction" (not hard SF, mind you, but at least it was largely dedicated to the idea of exploring and confronting the unknown) - it is a point in time when the original crew, while older, hadn't yet shriveled up entirely... And, of course, it brought us the "Enterprise Refit" - quite possibly the loveliest studio miniature ever constructed... Not to mention the K'Tinga, which got altogether too little appreciation IMO, winding up in the shadow of the "Klingon" Bird of Prey of the later films... Plus there's something about the era that I enjoy... the late-1970s sci-fi films...
But, yes, large tracts of that movie are dreadfully boring. As a model-maker, I love the Refit Enterprise model - and so I enjoy their extended fly-by sequence of it... But damn is that bit boring if you're not in it for the models. And worse, the original cut had all those klaxons going off all the time, various unfinished effects (wormhole asteroid, for instance? And I'd wager there was a real-world reason why they couldn't use the phasers.) - they say the production wound up rather rushed... which is a shame, because we all know how that played out in the resulting film.
You know, when I think of action games with customizable battle robots, there's one title that leaps straight to mind...
Armored Core
For sure, another game with that kind of customizability is a good thing, and it sets the game apart from many other games... But MW is certainly not the only case of this...
Evidently, some over-eager moderator doesn't know much history.
Parent should be (slightly) Funny, not Troll.
CAPTCHA: "preempt".
It seems like even you didn't get the reference...
This was a code you could type into Mechwarrior 2. Once you entered the code, a plane would fly overhead and drops a nuclear bomb, destroying everything (including you).
It's official: you're all nerds.
Now GTFO and get some sunlight!
I can't go out in the sunlight; I would be recognized.
The two men, known by the online nicknames "Netkairo" and "Ostiator," were arrested in February by Spanish police for their alleged role in running the "Mariposa" botnet, a malware distribution platform that spread malicious software to more than 12 million Internet addresses from 190 countries (mariposa is Spanish for "butterfly").
I'm sorry, was the definition of mariposa relevant somehow?
People use it to protect their stuff
This is the core problem with your auto analogy. DRM isn't something people use to protect their stuff. It's something they use to protect other people's stuff.
I was going to compare it to lojack, but that's still something the owner of the car is still ostensibly in control of. Nor can you compare it to lojack on a rental car because DVDs aren't rentals, you bought and own the content. But you aren't the one with the keys to the lock.
It depends how you define property and possession, naturally.
Whether or not you believe in the idea of intellectual property, it is, in fact, law. If you buy a DVD of the movie "Iron Man", you don't own the movie "Iron Man". The people who own the movie have the right to control, to some extent, what is done with it. And that is the protection which DRM provides.
Ever.
So how do you type a percent? Let me guess: you just tape a lots of pound signs together.
Do people actually use percentages in Matlab? Do they need to?
It is like saying if I put a Ferrari engine in a Chevy Suburban, it will perform as well as if i put it in a Ferrari.
Another way of putting it might be to say that, while both vehicles would then use the same engine, the Ferrari uses code structure recognition heuristics to optimize the sequence of calls it makes to the engine, while the Chevy takes a simpler approach to generating its sequence of calls.
I may not have made a very good analogy at all, I'm afraid...
This is not true, in my experience. Both MATLAB and Python (numpy/scipy) use the same underlying math libraries. MATLAB often optimized for windows PCs, but numpy/scipy offer the option to optimize for your C64, or whatever, with libraries like ATLAS.
I believe in source-level portability and all, but even if I could run Python on my C64 I don't think it'd be worth the trouble...
If "no math operations are defined," why is anyone surprised when subtraction fails?
-JS
If one is reading the manual, then no, it's not surprising that you can't subtract two INT64's.
If one is applying the same expectations to Matlab that they'd apply to other software, then yes, it is surprising that they'd support a particular numerical representation but not give you facilities to actually use it.
I think I understand the basic reasoning behind the decision - MATLAB isn't a tool for working in the integer space, it's a tool for working in the real and complex numerical spaces... But still, there was a point in time when I simply noticed Matlab supported integer data types and thought I'd use them. When I wrote a data importer lib for the Matlab environment and thought I'd be clever and represent integer data with the integer types - I learned my lesson. Don't. MATLAB can't do anything useful with integer types except convert them to double, so it's a lot more useful to just convert them to double in the first place.
It said the first ninjas were peasants, not all of them. Do you have an alternative history of their origins you would like to present?
Well, the Oedipus arc in the original "The Tick" comic covers it pretty well, I'd say...
(We are a hedge. Please move along.)
Well, it's like a lock on a car door
No, it's nothing like a lock on a car door.
Dude, just bear with me. It's an analogy... involving a car... I think you'll find that DRM has a number of similarities to a car door:
I get your point, that DRM has practical problems. To map that back onto my analogy, it is possible to lock oneself out of one's car - but DRM would be more like a sometimes-faulty lock.
But it's not as though that's all DRM does. Even if it's relatively easy to defeat (just as the best lock in the world doesn't help you if you can just break a window) - the fact that there's any security at all dissuades a large number of people who might otherwise walk all over copyright law without giving it a thought.
I agree that the situation sucks - I just thought Bearhouse's statement seemed to indicate that DRM was good for nothing apart from punishing legitimate customers. I don't believe that's true.
does the pope wear a funny hat?
What the fuck? Some kind of time portal just opened up...
I knew there had to be some irony in there somewhere...
As always, DRM punishes the honest customers, and is busted fast by the hackers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AACS_encryption_key_controversy
Well, it's like a lock on a car door: it keeps honest people honest. It doesn't stop the people who want to steal your car radio, GPS, etc., but it stops all the people who might be willing to just reach inside and take something off your car seat.
Also from the op... 12 inch screen... a 23 inch 1080p monitor is like 150 bucks, come on.
That seemed odd to me, too. I'm guessing it's a laptop.
Ironic, you know, like rain on your wedding day.
I'm glad we can all keep on making fun of that song, even 16 years later...
It's a little too ironic...
What Apple is actually going to do is shove a beam saber through Lala's head...
Is it just me or does this seem like an odd perspective to this story?
I thought that the Civil War technology to make die out of Pokeberries was about the least interesting part of the story
So wait...
there's civil war technology which people are killing off with Pokeberries?
Or did someone in the civil war era figure out how to use Pokeberries to make molds and similar toolings for casting?
I can't decide if I should make a pokemon joke, or a your mom joke.
No, not a pokemon joke, just a type of berry...
Honestly, though, it's hard to imagine coming out ahead. I mean, to cultivate the berries you have to fly from town to town, finding small patches of soil where you can plant a berry or two, then you need to keep coming back every few hours to water the damn things or the soil will dry up and the berries will die. All this and maybe in a couple days that berry you planted will sprout into a bush with, what, two or three berries on it? And then as soon as you pick 'em, the plant dies and you have to start over. It's a really annoying system.
@"Will it plant a flag?"
Thats easy, provided the flag pops out its ass (like a tail) as soon as it trips over, falling flat on its face and can't get up again!
A historic moment for all robot kind to proudly remember. :)
Hm, yes, very nice contingency plan there...
HA
Now just to be clear, Skyfire is not to be confused with Jetfire...