On the 8th day, the Lord created Coyote linux (www.coyotelinux.com).
And the masses thanked the lord for a floppy disk based linux router with simple PPPoE support.
And verily the masses did get IP addresses from SBC without the use of cheesy 'client software.'
And the masses touted a simple, open source solution that even the unenlighted masses could benefit from, and could be used to show heathens the path towards enlightenment.
And the masses did continue to enjoy the use of their DSL lines.
Slingshot (or wristrocket depending on where you grew up)! Think about it. The person associated to your network has to be within 100 meters. Realistically, more like 35-50 meters if there's a wall / window / thin sheet of newsprint between him and the AP. Paint balls, small water balloons, or.50 caliber ball berings aimed at that delicate LCD screen can make your network truly safe!
The threat of unauthorized use of an AP is seriously over rated. Sure WEP can be cracked. But, Airsnort needs between 100 megs and 1 gig of honest data to crack 128-bit WEP. How long is it going to take you to gain that much data at 11 megabits per second? My ever so rough math says that to get a gig of data at 1.375 megabyes per sec (that is the equivilent of 11 megabits right? if not the point is still valid, even if the math is off) says you need about 12 minutes of just data. Try staying in range of an AP that long at 35 mph.
Remember, most of that traffic isn't data, it's beacon frames. Just the AP announcing itself to the world. 128-bit WEP isn't secure enough to do business over. It's not even secure enough to call it encryption. It will, however, keep the average war driver off your network. I usually figure that if they've made an effort to secure the network, I should leave the network alone.
Now, for all those AP's that register as F (factory default), well...those people were asking to have their MAC address added to their AP's banned list.......
Bandwidth costs. Irvine might not care whether or not you spend you nights looking for that bootleg edit of "a walk to remember" or the deleted scenes from "crossroads", they do care about that formerly phat T3. You pay for that bandwidth in tuition (As well as for the rest of the campus' utilities.)
You complain about kazaa (with all of it's lovely spyware) being slow. The rest of campus was probably complaining about *everything else* being slow.
Here's a tip: go to school to get an education. Or at least leave your dorm room once a month. Download speeds become irrele....er... not as important once you discover girls and beer.
My current place of employment cares just slightly more than dick about system security. The upper network isn't bad, but the local machines blow.
even so, the BIOS is password protected. The easiest act of vandalism is to set a BIOS password, so the techs beat the vandals to the punch. As long as they were there, they opted to change to boot order as well. Pretty common really.
It's an idea use for older hardware. LRP was a bit beyond me, and Freesco doesn't support xDSL without some tweaking. It's still an awesome, versitile solution. Best of all, it's the most secure distro out there. If i don't want a change made to NVRAM, i just click the write-protect tab.
"We have no relationship with Equifax or GeoTrust. The information on a certificate is public information which we have used to inform this company that they have an option when they come to buy their certificate."
They aren't trying to 'inform', they're hard selling, in bad faith. They're misleading consumers into thinking there is no alternative. It's opportunistic, and pretty close to criminal.
An insurance company sends a "reminder" about homeowner insurance renewal, using information publicly available in some states (usually loan information).
I get notices from insurance agencies, credit card companies and any number of other bulk mailers. The difference is, they are out in the open about wanting to sell me a product i don't have, or informing me i have an alternative to the products i may already be using.
These companies are playing dumb. "aww shucks, you mean folks didn't realize they didn't HAVE to re-up with us? well, gosh golly, i guess we'll be more careful next time." A mailing could just as easily be sent out that says "we noticed that your domain name / cert is about to expire. Please consider us as an alternative when you renew." That'd be a company hawking their wares. What they're doing now is a clearly deceptive business practice. Slamming just happens to be the closest description.
let's look at the facts: Big government bureaucracy. Foul smelling, funny looking employees. Interplanetary highway construction. It's all there in black and white.
Of all the MS operating systems, I'd prefer 98 over anything else MS puts on the market.
1. The code is the oldest, hence the most thoroughly checked / seen code on the market from MS. Undocumented bugs for 98 itself are likely few and far between by now. By choosing XP or 2k, you're asking, no, begging to run into a "damn, Nobody saw that coming" bug.
2. The biggest problem MS faces, security, is pretty much non existant for this implimentation. Who is going to hack a volvo? Not only from the sense of there being no means, motive, or opportunity, who the hell would want to 'hack' a volvo? how anti-l33t can you get?
3. Pre-existing support. Granted, a sizable portion of this car was done as a hack together job, there are more than a few components that are likely off the shelf product. Since the products re unusual or out of the way items, I doubt the companies providing them put much, if any, though into linux/bsd/mac support
4. It's a demo car. the idea is to show that the technology exists today. It's easier to make the comparison "it runs on the same operating system your home computer does" than it is to say "we wrote specialized drivers and compiled s specific kernal for a SuSE installation based around the 2.4 kernal. The first reponse makes joe carbuyer go "ooooh" the second makes him say "huh?"
I'm all for the bashing of microsoft at every given opportunity, but for once there's no point in reinventing the wheel when you can chisel down the octogon you've got lying around. Besides, a production run would DEFINATLY run an true embedded system.
This will not be like 'Batman and Robin' This will not be like 'Batman and Robin'
I can't see the movie being half as good as an episode of Batman the Animated Series. The characters of Batman and Superman have such great depth, regretably some hollywierd casting director will pull a demographic move, rather than using real actors. Here's to holding out hope.
Sorry, had to get that out of my system. Truth be told he does have some (slight) points. I've had my share of nightmare linux installs, hardware pains, and general irks that make me pine for the ease of windows. Not the stability, just the ease. Linux has some ground to gain in the home market, given time it will get there.
Oh, and if you've got that much of a hard-on for fonts, buy a goddamned mac.
My high horse is in the shop, so i'll use a soap box.
As I'm writing this, I'm sitting behind a NAT box, and behind my WAP. See, Ameritech has provided me with "unlimited" bandwidth. They've said so in writing and in conversations with their support staff. If I'm sitting on "unlimited" bandwidth, and I'm paying for "unlimited" bandwidth, why should ameritech care what I've got on my network?
Here's a parable for you. My friends stop by for dinner. One of them asks to use the phone. Should ameritech (also my local provider) bill me more because a 2nd party is now using my phone? Well, if I go over a set amount of calls per month, I do get billed. But from the ISP standpoint of ameritech, I can run whatever I want for however long I want, just so long as the bill gets paid.
Cable companies got screwed by their PR folks. They offered "unlimited service" and are now being bitten in the ass by it. But rather than offer services tailored to the customers needs (say, bandidth based billing, capped lower speed service for more casual users) They're taking their ball and going home.
Capitalism will define the high spped internet access market. The DSL companies that have survived will grow stronger as cable companies continue to resrict service rather than adapt to the market.
Now, this isn't to say the second trilogy sucks. I thought ep. 1 was bearable, there were some things to change, mostly in the the promotion (c'mon, seeing darth maul break out the second blade of the lightsabre would've been way cooler if you didn't know about it ahead of time. It might have been hard to keep from "knowing" about, but we didn't need to see it in the first trailer.), and certainly there were some major issues with dialouge. Lucas didn't have any recent experience in film. He didn't know, or didn't have anyone telling him he was making bad choices. Hell in '98 we were drooling over spoilers that in retrospect killed the film. ("Full CG characters! wow! I don't know how they'll be implimented but that's cool!")
Ep. 2 made progress. But from the percieved failure of Ep. 1, no one was willing to give the movie any kind of a shake. When 1 was released, there was a devoted throng of geeks who thought they'd be "smarts" and spend weeks on end spouting off about just how bad the film was. That same contingent multiplied and said 2 marked the death of a franchiese, lucas has lost his touch, and it's all a huge mistake.
Sorry, but nothing will please the die hard of vocal Star Wars "fans" who want nothing more than to make a name by voicing their opinions. What's really sad, and what no SW geek will admit to, is the similarity between SW geeks and Internet WWE wrestling fans. After every RAW or Smackdown! there is a hard core group of fans that nit pick every blown move, every plot hole, every bit of less than logical storytelling. The result is that the WWE has begun catering to the more vocal internet fans more in their storylines. Check the ratings, the majority of the fans aren't buying it. The WWE has tried boosting ratings with signings of bigger name talent, and shocking storyline moves, all to no avail. Only now they've alienated both the smarts and the live / casual fans.
Same with Star Wars. Lucas could sign Spielberg up to direct episode 3, bring back harrison ford, sign Jet Li as the villan, and promise full frontal nude shots of Natalie Portman, but why? It probaly won't change much. The dialouge may get better with Spielberg at the helm, the story might get a little stronger and better paced, but it's not going to shut the "fans" up. The same contingent will just insert "Spielberg" into their rants instead of lucas. Hell, Francis Ford Coppola is close with lucas, let's throw him in the mix.
No matter who directs, you'll still get the same dearth of comparisions to each directors poor efforts. "Episode 3 sucked as bad as 'howard the duck' or 'always' or 'the godfather 3'" Come to think of it, Spielberg tanked out with a recent Sci Fi outing (or has 'AI' been forgotten that quickly?) and Coppola makes some pretty foul casting choices. (Can you say daddy's little girl? I thought so.) So long as the comic book guy wanna-be's have ammunition, they'll use it.
Face it. The 'net will never be happy with star wars. It was destined to be. But the bottom line doesn't lie, Star Wars is still the biggest franchiese movie out there. It's still got a strong devoted following. (I'll buy into the matrix when I see how well the film stands up to an audience that has seen bullet time and slow-mo action in every action movie made in the last two years.)
distrubing trend in lego creations
on
Lego Trebuchet
·
· Score: 5, Funny
So we've made a trebuchet out of lego bricks, but at what cost? Don't these mad men realise what they're combining? Weapons design, unlimited creativity, and lego bricks!
A few more rungs up the evolutionary design ladder coupled with another advance or two in mindstorms and we'll be recreating the first ten minutes of Teminator 2. Only this time, instead of a steel chromed skull, it'll be a smiling yellow face.
Reasonable, but feasable?
on
Cyber-Attacks?
·
· Score: 2
The idea that a terrorist organization could attempt some sort of hack isn't out of the realm of possibilities. Hell, a 12 year-old can take down a website. But what are they really capable of? Probably less than they're being given credit for. The media knows however, that by attaching any varient of any computer related phrase, something becomes plausable. Fear what you don't understand, it's the american way.
There's an upside now. All of us sudden, being a geek may be patriotic. A well run, well administered network won't be as useful in a zombie (which I'd bet is the most likely) attack. Al-Qaeda, you've met your match. The American geek. We're waiting for you, packet sniffers in hand!
This could be the start of a trend in sub naming. If the NSA named their sub the Jimmy Carter because of carter's service on a sub, maybe they could continue this practice of naming ships after presidential habits. Think of the possibilities?
USS Bill Clinton : The boat never seems to work quite the way everyone wants it too, and its outer hull is exceptionally slick. Easy to Catch, but tough to prove it really did something wrong.
USS Willaim Howard Taft : Big, unwieldy, Just kind of sits there and looks odd.
USS George Bush : Another spy ship along the lines of the Bill Clinton. A mistake in the shipyard causes the orders to say one thing and do another. Open switches close valves, and vice versa. Expected service life is only half that of a normal ship. Recently underwent minor modifications and re-entered service under the Name USS George W. Bush
USS Ronald Regan : Essentially useless as a spy ship as it sufffers continual memory errors. Those who served on the Regan however continue to tout the ship as the greatest ship in the inventory, asking monuments to it be built, and crediting the ship with single handedly winning every war since korea. the rest of the navy just rolls their eyes while waiting for it to be mothballed
USS Gerald Ford : Pressed into service after the scrapping of the USS Richard Nixon (removed from service after being too effective), The Ford has suffered from no less than 18 dry dock accidents, mostly relating to the ship rolling off the pillars used to support it.
writers basically get crapped on when it comes to films. The movie looks good? well the cinematography folks obviously choose location and great camera setups. Is the movie taunt and well paced? Always the hallmark of a good director. Characters? Oh man, Pacino created an awesome character. How's the story? well it was produced by so and so, and he's always good. (unless so and so is jerry bruckheimer, in which case it's a game of spot the errors)
But if the movie stinks, people ask "Who wrote that flaming pile of poo?" quick (without hitting IMDB) who wrote the last best pictures? or even your favorite movie.
if the writer does something clever, and it stays in the film, be thankful. Hollywood would rather take a character, no matter how one dimensional, and still shove it into a cliche rather than give him depth. see: Jack Ryan. Pretty basic character, and getting dumber every movie.
Doesn't anyone remember the addendum to the babelfish?
''Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloddier wars than anything else in the history of creation.''
Slashdot Mirror
On the 8th day, the Lord created Coyote linux (www.coyotelinux.com).
And the masses thanked the lord for a floppy disk based linux router with simple PPPoE support.
And verily the masses did get IP addresses from SBC without the use of cheesy 'client software.'
And the masses touted a simple, open source solution that even the unenlighted masses could benefit from, and could be used to show heathens the path towards enlightenment.
And the masses did continue to enjoy the use of their DSL lines.
And there was much rejoicing.
The threat of unauthorized use of an AP is seriously over rated. Sure WEP can be cracked. But, Airsnort needs between 100 megs and 1 gig of honest data to crack 128-bit WEP. How long is it going to take you to gain that much data at 11 megabits per second? My ever so rough math says that to get a gig of data at 1.375 megabyes per sec (that is the equivilent of 11 megabits right? if not the point is still valid, even if the math is off) says you need about 12 minutes of just data. Try staying in range of an AP that long at 35 mph.
Remember, most of that traffic isn't data, it's beacon frames. Just the AP announcing itself to the world. 128-bit WEP isn't secure enough to do business over. It's not even secure enough to call it encryption. It will, however, keep the average war driver off your network. I usually figure that if they've made an effort to secure the network, I should leave the network alone.
Now, for all those AP's that register as F (factory default), well...those people were asking to have their MAC address added to their AP's banned list.......
Bandwidth costs. Irvine might not care whether or not you spend you nights looking for that bootleg edit of "a walk to remember" or the deleted scenes from "crossroads", they do care about that formerly phat T3. You pay for that bandwidth in tuition (As well as for the rest of the campus' utilities.)
You complain about kazaa (with all of it's lovely spyware) being slow. The rest of campus was probably complaining about *everything else* being slow.
Here's a tip: go to school to get an education. Or at least leave your dorm room once a month. Download speeds become irrele....er... not as important once you discover girls and beer.
A 100 megaton nuke wouldn't do much to detroit. it's already a barren wasteland.
nice to see some people still remember. Scav is still looked upon with great reverence in what's left of the AW community.
bzzzzt wrong answer hans.
My current place of employment cares just slightly more than dick about system security. The upper network isn't bad, but the local machines blow.
even so, the BIOS is password protected. The easiest act of vandalism is to set a BIOS password, so the techs beat the vandals to the punch. As long as they were there, they opted to change to boot order as well. Pretty common really.
www.coyotelinux.com
It's an idea use for older hardware. LRP was a bit beyond me, and Freesco doesn't support xDSL without some tweaking. It's still an awesome, versitile solution. Best of all, it's the most secure distro out there. If i don't want a change made to NVRAM, i just click the write-protect tab.
"We have no relationship with Equifax or GeoTrust. The information on a certificate is public information which we have used to inform this company that they have an option when they come to buy their certificate."
They aren't trying to 'inform', they're hard selling, in bad faith. They're misleading consumers into thinking there is no alternative. It's opportunistic, and pretty close to criminal.
An insurance company sends a "reminder" about homeowner insurance renewal, using information publicly available in some states (usually loan information).
I get notices from insurance agencies, credit card companies and any number of other bulk mailers. The difference is, they are out in the open about wanting to sell me a product i don't have, or informing me i have an alternative to the products i may already be using.
These companies are playing dumb. "aww shucks, you mean folks didn't realize they didn't HAVE to re-up with us? well, gosh golly, i guess we'll be more careful next time." A mailing could just as easily be sent out that says "we noticed that your domain name / cert is about to expire. Please consider us as an alternative when you renew." That'd be a company hawking their wares. What they're doing now is a clearly deceptive business practice. Slamming just happens to be the closest description.
let's look at the facts: Big government bureaucracy. Foul smelling, funny looking employees. Interplanetary highway construction. It's all there in black and white.
NASA is run by the Vorgons.
Of all the MS operating systems, I'd prefer 98 over anything else MS puts on the market.
1. The code is the oldest, hence the most thoroughly checked / seen code on the market from MS. Undocumented bugs for 98 itself are likely few and far between by now. By choosing XP or 2k, you're asking, no, begging to run into a "damn, Nobody saw that coming" bug.
2. The biggest problem MS faces, security, is pretty much non existant for this implimentation. Who is going to hack a volvo? Not only from the sense of there being no means, motive, or opportunity, who the hell would want to 'hack' a volvo? how anti-l33t can you get?
3. Pre-existing support. Granted, a sizable portion of this car was done as a hack together job, there are more than a few components that are likely off the shelf product. Since the products re unusual or out of the way items, I doubt the companies providing them put much, if any, though into linux/bsd/mac support
4. It's a demo car. the idea is to show that the technology exists today. It's easier to make the comparison "it runs on the same operating system your home computer does" than it is to say "we wrote specialized drivers and compiled s specific kernal for a SuSE installation based around the 2.4 kernal. The first reponse makes joe carbuyer go "ooooh" the second makes him say "huh?"
I'm all for the bashing of microsoft at every given opportunity, but for once there's no point in reinventing the wheel when you can chisel down the octogon you've got lying around. Besides, a production run would DEFINATLY run an true embedded system.
I can't see the movie being half as good as an episode of Batman the Animated Series. The characters of Batman and Superman have such great depth, regretably some hollywierd casting director will pull a demographic move, rather than using real actors. Here's to holding out hope.
WAAAAAAAAAH Linux isn't pretty!
Sorry, had to get that out of my system. Truth be told he does have some (slight) points. I've had my share of nightmare linux installs, hardware pains, and general irks that make me pine for the ease of windows. Not the stability, just the ease. Linux has some ground to gain in the home market, given time it will get there.
Oh, and if you've got that much of a hard-on for fonts, buy a goddamned mac.
My high horse is in the shop, so i'll use a soap box.
As I'm writing this, I'm sitting behind a NAT box, and behind my WAP. See, Ameritech has provided me with "unlimited" bandwidth. They've said so in writing and in conversations with their support staff. If I'm sitting on "unlimited" bandwidth, and I'm paying for "unlimited" bandwidth, why should ameritech care what I've got on my network?
Here's a parable for you. My friends stop by for dinner. One of them asks to use the phone. Should ameritech (also my local provider) bill me more because a 2nd party is now using my phone? Well, if I go over a set amount of calls per month, I do get billed. But from the ISP standpoint of ameritech, I can run whatever I want for however long I want, just so long as the bill gets paid.
Cable companies got screwed by their PR folks. They offered "unlimited service" and are now being bitten in the ass by it. But rather than offer services tailored to the customers needs (say, bandidth based billing, capped lower speed service for more casual users) They're taking their ball and going home.
Capitalism will define the high spped internet access market. The DSL companies that have survived will grow stronger as cable companies continue to resrict service rather than adapt to the market.
Time to burn off some karma.
1). Spielberg isn't the savior.
2). No one is the savior for star wars
Now, this isn't to say the second trilogy sucks. I thought ep. 1 was bearable, there were some things to change, mostly in the the promotion (c'mon, seeing darth maul break out the second blade of the lightsabre would've been way cooler if you didn't know about it ahead of time. It might have been hard to keep from "knowing" about, but we didn't need to see it in the first trailer.), and certainly there were some major issues with dialouge. Lucas didn't have any recent experience in film. He didn't know, or didn't have anyone telling him he was making bad choices. Hell in '98 we were drooling over spoilers that in retrospect killed the film. ("Full CG characters! wow! I don't know how they'll be implimented but that's cool!")
Ep. 2 made progress. But from the percieved failure of Ep. 1, no one was willing to give the movie any kind of a shake. When 1 was released, there was a devoted throng of geeks who thought they'd be "smarts" and spend weeks on end spouting off about just how bad the film was. That same contingent multiplied and said 2 marked the death of a franchiese, lucas has lost his touch, and it's all a huge mistake.
Sorry, but nothing will please the die hard of vocal Star Wars "fans" who want nothing more than to make a name by voicing their opinions. What's really sad, and what no SW geek will admit to, is the similarity between SW geeks and Internet WWE wrestling fans. After every RAW or Smackdown! there is a hard core group of fans that nit pick every blown move, every plot hole, every bit of less than logical storytelling. The result is that the WWE has begun catering to the more vocal internet fans more in their storylines. Check the ratings, the majority of the fans aren't buying it. The WWE has tried boosting ratings with signings of bigger name talent, and shocking storyline moves, all to no avail. Only now they've alienated both the smarts and the live / casual fans.
Same with Star Wars. Lucas could sign Spielberg up to direct episode 3, bring back harrison ford, sign Jet Li as the villan, and promise full frontal nude shots of Natalie Portman, but why? It probaly won't change much. The dialouge may get better with Spielberg at the helm, the story might get a little stronger and better paced, but it's not going to shut the "fans" up. The same contingent will just insert "Spielberg" into their rants instead of lucas. Hell, Francis Ford Coppola is close with lucas, let's throw him in the mix.
No matter who directs, you'll still get the same dearth of comparisions to each directors poor efforts. "Episode 3 sucked as bad as 'howard the duck' or 'always' or 'the godfather 3'" Come to think of it, Spielberg tanked out with a recent Sci Fi outing (or has 'AI' been forgotten that quickly?) and Coppola makes some pretty foul casting choices. (Can you say daddy's little girl? I thought so.) So long as the comic book guy wanna-be's have ammunition, they'll use it.
Face it. The 'net will never be happy with star wars. It was destined to be. But the bottom line doesn't lie, Star Wars is still the biggest franchiese movie out there. It's still got a strong devoted following. (I'll buy into the matrix when I see how well the film stands up to an audience that has seen bullet time and slow-mo action in every action movie made in the last two years.)
So we've made a trebuchet out of lego bricks, but at what cost? Don't these mad men realise what they're combining? Weapons design, unlimited creativity, and lego bricks!
A few more rungs up the evolutionary design ladder coupled with another advance or two in mindstorms and we'll be recreating the first ten minutes of Teminator 2. Only this time, instead of a steel chromed skull, it'll be a smiling yellow face.
We're doomed.
Fare thee well John.
"Boris The Spider"
Look, he's crawling up my wall
Black and hairy, very small
Now he's up above my head
Hanging by a little thread
Boris the spider
Boris the spider
Now he's dropped on to the floor
Heading for the bedroom door
Maybe he's as scared as me
Where's he gone now, I can't see
Boris the spider
Boris the spider
Creepy, crawly
Creepy, crawly
Creepy, creepy, crawly, crawly
Creepy, creepy, crawly, crawly
Creepy, creepy, crawly, crawly
Creepy, creepy, crawly, crawly
There he is wrapped in a ball
Doesn't seem to move at all
Perhaps he's dead, I'll just make sure
Pick this book up off the floor
Boris the spider
Boris the spider
Creepy, crawly
Creepy, crawly
Creepy, creepy, crawly, crawly
Creepy, creepy, crawly, crawly
Creepy, creepy, crawly, crawly
Creepy, creepy, crawly, crawly
He's come to a sticky end
Don't think he will ever mend
Never more will he crawl 'round
He's embedded in the ground
Boris the spider
Boris the spider
"What about the literacy impared?"
What a great euphamism for "fucking morons"
The idea that a terrorist organization could attempt some sort of hack isn't out of the realm of possibilities. Hell, a 12 year-old can take down a website. But what are they really capable of? Probably less than they're being given credit for. The media knows however, that by attaching any varient of any computer related phrase, something becomes plausable. Fear what you don't understand, it's the american way.
There's an upside now. All of us sudden, being a geek may be patriotic. A well run, well administered network won't be as useful in a zombie (which I'd bet is the most likely) attack. Al-Qaeda, you've met your match. The American geek. We're waiting for you, packet sniffers in hand!
"using the Internet as a direct instrument of bloodshed."
I can see the headlines now: "Millions dead as UDP packets are directed out of control. Packet shards found embeded in victims!"
Never in the course of human history have so few been so slashdotted by so many.
i copied and pasted from IMDB. they can't be wrong can they? :) Too lazy to fix my sig.
This could be the start of a trend in sub naming. If the NSA named their sub the Jimmy Carter because of carter's service on a sub, maybe they could continue this practice of naming ships after presidential habits. Think of the possibilities?
USS Bill Clinton : The boat never seems to work quite the way everyone wants it too, and its outer hull is exceptionally slick. Easy to Catch, but tough to prove it really did something wrong.
USS Willaim Howard Taft : Big, unwieldy, Just kind of sits there and looks odd.
USS George Bush : Another spy ship along the lines of the Bill Clinton. A mistake in the shipyard causes the orders to say one thing and do another. Open switches close valves, and vice versa. Expected service life is only half that of a normal ship. Recently underwent minor modifications and re-entered service under the Name USS George W. Bush
USS Ronald Regan : Essentially useless as a spy ship as it sufffers continual memory errors. Those who served on the Regan however continue to tout the ship as the greatest ship in the inventory, asking monuments to it be built, and crediting the ship with single handedly winning every war since korea. the rest of the navy just rolls their eyes while waiting for it to be mothballed
USS Gerald Ford : Pressed into service after the scrapping of the USS Richard Nixon (removed from service after being too effective), The Ford has suffered from no less than 18 dry dock accidents, mostly relating to the ship rolling off the pillars used to support it.
karma to burn here:
writers basically get crapped on when it comes to films. The movie looks good? well the cinematography folks obviously choose location and great camera setups. Is the movie taunt and well paced? Always the hallmark of a good director. Characters? Oh man, Pacino created an awesome character. How's the story? well it was produced by so and so, and he's always good. (unless so and so is jerry bruckheimer, in which case it's a game of spot the errors)
But if the movie stinks, people ask "Who wrote that flaming pile of poo?" quick (without hitting IMDB) who wrote the last best pictures? or even your favorite movie.
if the writer does something clever, and it stays in the film, be thankful. Hollywood would rather take a character, no matter how one dimensional, and still shove it into a cliche rather than give him depth. see: Jack Ryan. Pretty basic character, and getting dumber every movie.
Doesn't this violate the DMCA?
Doesn't everything?
Doesn't anyone remember the addendum to the babelfish?
''Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloddier wars than anything else in the history of creation.''
we're doomed. I'm taking names for a bus to mars.