all the characters are copies of bebop, try watching bebop after you watched firefly! even the hunter at the end, and the color of his jumpsuit are stolen.
Never did I claim that Joss was original, or that he came up with a single original idea. And I'm sure there's some debate in that, but I think I pretty much debunked the claim that it is a "copy" of Bebop -- or that even a single character in Firefly is a "copy" of a single character in Bebop.
In fact, if I take you at your word, comparing it to Bebop would be an insult to Bebop. (Not that I do.)
As for the debate you seem to be so desperate to prove...
Generic Hardass Space Captain no. 225.
Yes, this, we've seen before.
Hooker w/ Heart of Gold no 3256.
Never saw it in scifi, nor have I seen the "companion" concept. (Hint: She's not just a hooker.)
Unintentionally Humorous Thug no. 123.
Actually, I'm fairly sure it's intentional. And he's funnier than just about any similar character I can think of.
Book is Preacher with a Mysterious Past no. 410
Find me 409 more, then.
I can't think if I've ever seen that before. Person with a mysterious past, yes. Preacher with a dark past, yes. Preacher with a dark, mysterious past, most probably a special agent? Nope.
River is Rogue Psychic Assassin escaped from Government Program no. 60
Again, no, never saw that. Rogue assassin escaped from Govm't Program, yes, but not a psychic. And never done so well.
Zoe is Tough Sassy Black Woman no. 2304, Wash is Wiseass Sidekick no. 1,000,000
Not even worth responding to.
Kaylee is Sheltered Engineer no. 230.
Still never seen Sheltered Engineer #1-229. Engineers are generally the least sheltered in any show I've seen. Think about any of the Star Trek engineers...
Oh, but at least Joss came up with one unique quality - she's easy!
"Easy" is not the word you're looking for. Try "horny."
She behaves exactly like a horny, sheltered boy would, and that hasn't been done. There are easy girls, but not easy girls who behave like easy boys.
There's more to it, actually: Her relationship with Simon is, thus, the exact opposite of the way that kind of relationship usually goes -- Simon is the frigid, proper, upper-class prick, and Kaylee is the down-to-earth country boy^Wgirl who's the most unlikely match for him.
Was there a single character on that fucking stupid show that wasn't the cheesiest, most direct rip-off of a character that was a thousand times better in its original source?
I have a challenge for you: Find a single show that I can't pick to shreds in exactly the same way.
There's no such thing as true originality -- every idea comes from somewhere. It's a shame you're so determined not to like that show.
But let me repeat, before you forget: this is not the debate I was having. I was debating that Firefly is a direct ripoff of Cowboy Bebop, which it is not. In fact, I've never seen a direct ripoff of Cowboy Bebop. It'd be hard to do.
If you only play DirectX 10 games, then yeah, Vista is your only choice. Otherwise, you're going to want XP for at least another few years, until MS fixes Vista.
Another fact: We can have this discussion, and points can actually be made for both sides. CR assumes that you're right, and that Vista is the way to go, end of story -- which is simply not true. But I suppose gamers aren't in CR's target market, either. (Just what is CR's target market?)
If the "type of connection" of BitTorrent is to be detected, you really have to watch the data going through. The same can be said for really anything other than reacting merely to the port number used.
That said, what Comcast is doing, if I remember, is actually based on nothing more than the total number of TCP connections. Thus, you actually can run BitTorrent just fine, so long as you limit the max number of connections to something reasonable.
I was hired to work with someone who had been the sole person on this project for awhile. The first thing I did was start asking questions like "Why did you do it this way?" Sometimes, he had a good reason. Often, it was that he'd done it that way before he quite knew what he was doing.
But I was lucky -- we both pretty much agree on the "right way" to do something, and in cases where he had done something we both thought was brain-dead, I often had the time (while "learning the codebase") to refactor it. And that, I was proud of, particularly how fast I did it.
Now, I'm kind of in the same place -- I started out with a pattern that was kind of cool, and powerful, and when I was about halfway through implementing the classes that use that pattern, I realized how much code I was duplicating. Because I had to get it out the door, I just kept right on going, practically copy-and-pasting. This week, with any luck, I'll be able to take a few days back to clean that up.
So, in my own opinion, my own code will pretty much always look ugly before the first refactor. But I'm lucky, because I have a boss who programs himself, and thus understands the value of frequent refactoring and getting it right. And none of that really has anything to do with other people, they just have the advantage of being able to see where your code suck before you do (because they haven't had to live with it).
Agreed about Jar-Jar, though. I was sincerely hoping that Lucas would offer up some fanservice in the form of him being a casualty of Anakin's fall to the dark side.:(
Back before Episode 2, Mad Magazine included -- in one of their "best of the year / worst of the year" things -- a poster we all want to see. It was titled "Star Wars Episode II: A Galaxy Rejoices", and looked very much like the Ep 1 poster, except everyone is happy, and Anakin is slicing Jar-Jar's head off.
That is perhaps the only thing I've ever seen in Mad Magazine that I desperately wished would come true.
Both are patent-encumbered at the moment, and AAC sounds a lot better.
No, people don't love mp3 because of iTunes, it's the other way around -- iTunes would not exist, were it not for mp3. People don't particularly love mp3, either, they just assume it's the only option out there -- kind of like Windows on PCs.
So I encrypted the protocol, and downloaded at 10 mbits. On a good day, I could saturate that -- and that's the 10 mbits that went into my dorm. Other dorms might've had 100 mbits, I'm not sure.
Of course, I wasn't downloading Linux ISOs with that.
If the numbers went down, the MAFIAA will claim that their anti-piracy efforts are working. This means that not only will those anti-piracy efforts not go away, but people are much more likely to take them seriously with their next claim.
If the numbers didn't go down, the MAFIAA will claim that piracy is rampant, and use that as an excuse to do even more DRM, and get even more laws passed for them.
It's called spin. Let me try some of my own:
If the numbers went down, I claim that this proves that piracy isn't as much of a threat to their profits as they thought, and therefore, DRM should end.
If the numbers didn't go down, I claim that this proves that people are so sick and tired of the MAFIAA's bullshit on their legitimate products that they're willing to turn to piracy.
Here's my trump card, though: If we really can't tell who's right, the default position should be consumer freedom.
Then it sounds like you're right in line with CR, that's their point of view as well.
So what professional did they ask here?
It's a good idea if they're buying a computer today that they expect to have supported by all their new hardware, software, and services for the next 5+ years.
You're assuming that Vista will be better than XP at some point in the next 5 years, or before they buy their next upgrade.
In other words, you're assuming it isn't the new Windows ME.
The fact that XP exists, and still works well (compared to Vista), is why no one in their right mind should be recommending Vista.
Never mind that I think they're wrong in their Linux comparison -- they actually recommend buying a dual-core Vista laptop if the EEE PC isn't enough as-is. The sheer number of options between those, even in Windows...
If you think someone coming to you and saying "I'm a big gamer, what computer should I buy?", and you answering "Oh, you should install Linux, it plays all the cutting edge games!" is in any way NOT wrong or bad advice, I think we can all agree you're not anywhere near as competent at distilling advanced technical knowledge as you think you are.
This is what's known as a strawman argument.
No, if someone came to me with that question, I'd suggest building their own, or buying a Dell (NOT Alienware), and putting XP on it. But people don't come to me with that question, they come to me with questions like "So I hear you're into Linux, should I use that for myself?" And the first thing out of my mouth is not "yes", but "What do you use a computer for?"
If, at any point, they mention some Windows-specific program, or that they're into gaming, I'll point out that they are going to need Windows, so the best they can hope for is dual-boot.
Actually, the most frequent question is "Can you fix my computer?" Second most frequent is "How do I stay secure online?" And while it's unlikely that I'll answer that without mentioning Linux, it's also unlikely that I'll recommend they switch -- I just let them know that if they do decide to switch, I'll be willing to walk them through it.
They don't have space to go into page after page of caveats and explanations for every summary they make
Bullshit, this is the Internet. Even if they don't have space, they can link back to Wikipedia or something. But like I said, I wasn't looking for "page after page". I was looking for some simple accuracy -- things like "Most games won't work with Linux."
simply so that the average Linux user doesn't get his ego bruised.
That one's an ad-hominim attack, right there with your suggestion that I'm autistic (I'm not).
I develop HD-DVDs for a living. The very existence of my current job, and company, is dependent on Microsoft, and I have not, yet, been able to use Linux at work, even as a VM host -- nor have I spent a ton of time trying. I am not, by any means, a zealot.
For the average suburban household, buying a Dell PC with Vista is the most optimal choice.
Even if you're arguing Windows is the most optimal choice -- and I don't even want to get into that tired flamewar -- are you actually deluded enough to think Vista is a better choice than XP for those users?
It's pretty sad when I have to say the NVidia-drivers package does more work for me than the actual Xorg configuration tools.
And I have to say, it's pretty good when Xorg and the Ubuntu installers do so much for me that even I barely have to touch Xorg. The one time I can remember touching it since Ubuntu is enabling some stuff for Beryl to work, and I don't use Beryl anymore.
What gets me is there are some really nice LiveCD distros out there with all the creature comforts like hardware detection, easy customization and intuitive prompts. Why can't the big disk-based distros follow suit ?
Ubuntu does, at least on first install.
We can't even get a decent package manager, save for Ubuntu's Single-Click Install.
That could be read as: "We can get a decent package manager."
Which is more than you can say for, I don't know, any other OS. They may have "more intuitive" ways to install software, although I could debate that quite a bit, but I haven't seen anything else come with anything resembling a Linux package manager.
What if I like Ubuntu's friendly desktop, but I prefer Gentoo's build system ?
If you're technically inclined enough to ask that question, you're also qualified to find the friendly desktop things from Ubuntu and install them on Gentoo.
I find the Debian package manager to be one of the reasons Ubuntu's desktop is friendly.
We need to get out of denial and start working on solutions.
Good luck with that.
But the fact that you are a computer elitist puts you outside the realm of "average Joe". Average Joe doesn't care what build system is used, he just wants to click on something and have it install. Ubuntu does that. He doesn't care whether it's the nVidia drivers or the Xorg configuration tools, he just wants his GUI to work (and doesn't even know it's called a GUI), and guess what? Ubuntu does that, too.
First you shouldn't use a run on sentence they are bad we don't use them anymore because we graduated middle school you did graduate middle school right?
Now, more relevantly: USB 2.0 is cheaper, more likely to be in every computer, and hard drives aren't fast enough for it to make a difference. Specifically, most hard drives (7200 RPM) are likely to support around 60 megabytes per second, which is what USB 2.0 supports. Firewire 400 is actually slower, more like 50 megabytes per second, although there are other Firewire specs.
As for CPU overhead, this is 2007. My laptop can do on-the-fly encryption of entire disk partitions with no noticeable loss of performance -- I hardly even notice the CPU usage, even if I was only looking at one core. And even if it used 100% CPU, that's one core, I have another. Bickering about the CPU overhead of various pieces of hardware is completely pointless -- it's like the old software/hardware RAID debate, but software RAID is fast enough (sometimes faster), cheaper, and can do more, so software RAID wins.
Probably the simplest way would be to format it with a Linux filesystem, so you can apply proper permissions. It won't make it so either of you can unmount it, at least, not necessarily. But it will let you share files.
Another possibility is adding it to fstab yourself with custom mount options, possibly with some tweaks to sudoers. I'm not sure if you can get it to automount that way, though.
If you simply return the drive as defective, they'll shrug their shoulders and assume it was just that one disk. Tons of Windows users might not even have noticed.
The point of suing them is so there's no mistake -- every single drive is defective -- and so they don't assume they can simply give you a replacement drive and everything will be OK.
No doubt they would. Does it really surprise you to think that a professional auto mechanic would have different priorities in their car purchase than a typical suburban housewife who doesn't know where the dipstick is?
I wouldn't ask a professional auto mechanic about the kind of car they'd buy. I'd ask them whether the car I was looking to buy was a good car.
Does it really surprise you that the typical slashdot reader has different priorities when evaluating software than the typical AOL user?
It's not about priorities. Recommending Windows Vista to the typical AOL user? In what way is that a good idea? What priorities would you have to have for that to ever be a good idea?
It doesn't make their evaluations or recommendations wrong, it makes them not appropriate for every person on Earth, which I don't think CR would ever claim they were.
I am arguing that if their evaluations or recommendations are not appropriate for any person on Earth, they are, in fact, wrong.
Slashdot Mirror
Then you should've said that, moron. No, it wasn't implied.
Except they are now talking about Linux.
I thought CR exists precisely to inform "most people" about other alternatives, and specifically, help them choose the right alternative?
...to this:
Never did I claim that Joss was original, or that he came up with a single original idea. And I'm sure there's some debate in that, but I think I pretty much debunked the claim that it is a "copy" of Bebop -- or that even a single character in Firefly is a "copy" of a single character in Bebop.
In fact, if I take you at your word, comparing it to Bebop would be an insult to Bebop. (Not that I do.)
As for the debate you seem to be so desperate to prove...
Yes, this, we've seen before.
Never saw it in scifi, nor have I seen the "companion" concept. (Hint: She's not just a hooker.)
Actually, I'm fairly sure it's intentional. And he's funnier than just about any similar character I can think of.
Find me 409 more, then.
I can't think if I've ever seen that before. Person with a mysterious past, yes. Preacher with a dark past, yes. Preacher with a dark, mysterious past, most probably a special agent? Nope.
Again, no, never saw that. Rogue assassin escaped from Govm't Program, yes, but not a psychic. And never done so well.
Not even worth responding to.
Still never seen Sheltered Engineer #1-229. Engineers are generally the least sheltered in any show I've seen. Think about any of the Star Trek engineers...
"Easy" is not the word you're looking for. Try "horny."
She behaves exactly like a horny, sheltered boy would, and that hasn't been done. There are easy girls, but not easy girls who behave like easy boys.
There's more to it, actually: Her relationship with Simon is, thus, the exact opposite of the way that kind of relationship usually goes -- Simon is the frigid, proper, upper-class prick, and Kaylee is the down-to-earth country boy^Wgirl who's the most unlikely match for him.
I have a challenge for you: Find a single show that I can't pick to shreds in exactly the same way.
There's no such thing as true originality -- every idea comes from somewhere. It's a shame you're so determined not to like that show.
But let me repeat, before you forget: this is not the debate I was having. I was debating that Firefly is a direct ripoff of Cowboy Bebop, which it is not. In fact, I've never seen a direct ripoff of Cowboy Bebop. It'd be hard to do.
Annoying fact: Vista sucks in many, many ways.
If you only play DirectX 10 games, then yeah, Vista is your only choice. Otherwise, you're going to want XP for at least another few years, until MS fixes Vista.
Another fact: We can have this discussion, and points can actually be made for both sides. CR assumes that you're right, and that Vista is the way to go, end of story -- which is simply not true. But I suppose gamers aren't in CR's target market, either. (Just what is CR's target market?)
Gaming was one part. Vista is my main gripe, but the whole article had an air of dumbing it down -- which is not bad in itself, to a point.
As Einstein says, everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.
If the "type of connection" of BitTorrent is to be detected, you really have to watch the data going through. The same can be said for really anything other than reacting merely to the port number used.
That said, what Comcast is doing, if I remember, is actually based on nothing more than the total number of TCP connections. Thus, you actually can run BitTorrent just fine, so long as you limit the max number of connections to something reasonable.
What, exactly, are they going to do to kill my SSL certs?
I'd assume Firefoy would warn me before installing an unsigned update, right?
The Internet already has beer and hookers.
I was hired to work with someone who had been the sole person on this project for awhile. The first thing I did was start asking questions like "Why did you do it this way?" Sometimes, he had a good reason. Often, it was that he'd done it that way before he quite knew what he was doing.
But I was lucky -- we both pretty much agree on the "right way" to do something, and in cases where he had done something we both thought was brain-dead, I often had the time (while "learning the codebase") to refactor it. And that, I was proud of, particularly how fast I did it.
Now, I'm kind of in the same place -- I started out with a pattern that was kind of cool, and powerful, and when I was about halfway through implementing the classes that use that pattern, I realized how much code I was duplicating. Because I had to get it out the door, I just kept right on going, practically copy-and-pasting. This week, with any luck, I'll be able to take a few days back to clean that up.
So, in my own opinion, my own code will pretty much always look ugly before the first refactor. But I'm lucky, because I have a boss who programs himself, and thus understands the value of frequent refactoring and getting it right. And none of that really has anything to do with other people, they just have the advantage of being able to see where your code suck before you do (because they haven't had to live with it).
Back before Episode 2, Mad Magazine included -- in one of their "best of the year / worst of the year" things -- a poster we all want to see. It was titled "Star Wars Episode II: A Galaxy Rejoices", and looked very much like the Ep 1 poster, except everyone is happy, and Anakin is slicing Jar-Jar's head off.
That is perhaps the only thing I've ever seen in Mad Magazine that I desperately wished would come true.
Both are patent-encumbered at the moment, and AAC sounds a lot better.
No, people don't love mp3 because of iTunes, it's the other way around -- iTunes would not exist, were it not for mp3. People don't particularly love mp3, either, they just assume it's the only option out there -- kind of like Windows on PCs.
So I encrypted the protocol, and downloaded at 10 mbits. On a good day, I could saturate that -- and that's the 10 mbits that went into my dorm. Other dorms might've had 100 mbits, I'm not sure.
Of course, I wasn't downloading Linux ISOs with that.
If the numbers went down, the MAFIAA will claim that their anti-piracy efforts are working. This means that not only will those anti-piracy efforts not go away, but people are much more likely to take them seriously with their next claim.
If the numbers didn't go down, the MAFIAA will claim that piracy is rampant, and use that as an excuse to do even more DRM, and get even more laws passed for them.
It's called spin. Let me try some of my own:
If the numbers went down, I claim that this proves that piracy isn't as much of a threat to their profits as they thought, and therefore, DRM should end.
If the numbers didn't go down, I claim that this proves that people are so sick and tired of the MAFIAA's bullshit on their legitimate products that they're willing to turn to piracy.
Here's my trump card, though: If we really can't tell who's right, the default position should be consumer freedom.
And why, exactly, can't Consumer Reports recommend shopping online?
EEE PC, or the very same laptop you were going to suggest, but with XP. It's not that they recommend Windows, but that they recommend Vista.
So what professional did they ask here?
You're assuming that Vista will be better than XP at some point in the next 5 years, or before they buy their next upgrade.
In other words, you're assuming it isn't the new Windows ME.
Straight from the horse's mouth.
Besides, what, exactly, is the problem with saying "You can do this, but it's not supported?"
What, are they trying to save money per word downloaded?
What tests? Link, please?
Firewire 800 would blow it away, yes, but not for hard drives.
The fact that XP exists, and still works well (compared to Vista), is why no one in their right mind should be recommending Vista.
Never mind that I think they're wrong in their Linux comparison -- they actually recommend buying a dual-core Vista laptop if the EEE PC isn't enough as-is. The sheer number of options between those, even in Windows...
This is what's known as a strawman argument.
No, if someone came to me with that question, I'd suggest building their own, or buying a Dell (NOT Alienware), and putting XP on it. But people don't come to me with that question, they come to me with questions like "So I hear you're into Linux, should I use that for myself?" And the first thing out of my mouth is not "yes", but "What do you use a computer for?"
If, at any point, they mention some Windows-specific program, or that they're into gaming, I'll point out that they are going to need Windows, so the best they can hope for is dual-boot.
Actually, the most frequent question is "Can you fix my computer?" Second most frequent is "How do I stay secure online?" And while it's unlikely that I'll answer that without mentioning Linux, it's also unlikely that I'll recommend they switch -- I just let them know that if they do decide to switch, I'll be willing to walk them through it.
Bullshit, this is the Internet. Even if they don't have space, they can link back to Wikipedia or something. But like I said, I wasn't looking for "page after page". I was looking for some simple accuracy -- things like "Most games won't work with Linux."
That one's an ad-hominim attack, right there with your suggestion that I'm autistic (I'm not).
I develop HD-DVDs for a living. The very existence of my current job, and company, is dependent on Microsoft, and I have not, yet, been able to use Linux at work, even as a VM host -- nor have I spent a ton of time trying. I am not, by any means, a zealot.
Even if you're arguing Windows is the most optimal choice -- and I don't even want to get into that tired flamewar -- are you actually deluded enough to think Vista is a better choice than XP for those users?
And I have to say, it's pretty good when Xorg and the Ubuntu installers do so much for me that even I barely have to touch Xorg. The one time I can remember touching it since Ubuntu is enabling some stuff for Beryl to work, and I don't use Beryl anymore.
Ubuntu does, at least on first install.
That could be read as: "We can get a decent package manager."
Which is more than you can say for, I don't know, any other OS. They may have "more intuitive" ways to install software, although I could debate that quite a bit, but I haven't seen anything else come with anything resembling a Linux package manager.
If you're technically inclined enough to ask that question, you're also qualified to find the friendly desktop things from Ubuntu and install them on Gentoo.
I find the Debian package manager to be one of the reasons Ubuntu's desktop is friendly.
Good luck with that.
But the fact that you are a computer elitist puts you outside the realm of "average Joe". Average Joe doesn't care what build system is used, he just wants to click on something and have it install. Ubuntu does that. He doesn't care whether it's the nVidia drivers or the Xorg configuration tools, he just wants his GUI to work (and doesn't even know it's called a GUI), and guess what? Ubuntu does that, too.
First you shouldn't use a run on sentence they are bad we don't use them anymore because we graduated middle school you did graduate middle school right?
Now, more relevantly: USB 2.0 is cheaper, more likely to be in every computer, and hard drives aren't fast enough for it to make a difference. Specifically, most hard drives (7200 RPM) are likely to support around 60 megabytes per second, which is what USB 2.0 supports. Firewire 400 is actually slower, more like 50 megabytes per second, although there are other Firewire specs.
As for CPU overhead, this is 2007. My laptop can do on-the-fly encryption of entire disk partitions with no noticeable loss of performance -- I hardly even notice the CPU usage, even if I was only looking at one core. And even if it used 100% CPU, that's one core, I have another. Bickering about the CPU overhead of various pieces of hardware is completely pointless -- it's like the old software/hardware RAID debate, but software RAID is fast enough (sometimes faster), cheaper, and can do more, so software RAID wins.
It's entirely possible to share the drive.
Probably the simplest way would be to format it with a Linux filesystem, so you can apply proper permissions. It won't make it so either of you can unmount it, at least, not necessarily. But it will let you share files.
Another possibility is adding it to fstab yourself with custom mount options, possibly with some tweaks to sudoers. I'm not sure if you can get it to automount that way, though.
If you simply return the drive as defective, they'll shrug their shoulders and assume it was just that one disk. Tons of Windows users might not even have noticed.
The point of suing them is so there's no mistake -- every single drive is defective -- and so they don't assume they can simply give you a replacement drive and everything will be OK.
Don't give them money for making a defective product?
Also, if you're just going to use it as an internal drive, internal drives are cheaper anyway.
Firefly.
Difference is, I don't think there's much Fox can do now, other than commission a second season, and they'll never do that, right?
I wouldn't ask a professional auto mechanic about the kind of car they'd buy. I'd ask them whether the car I was looking to buy was a good car.
It's not about priorities. Recommending Windows Vista to the typical AOL user? In what way is that a good idea? What priorities would you have to have for that to ever be a good idea?
I am arguing that if their evaluations or recommendations are not appropriate for any person on Earth, they are, in fact, wrong.