Nullius in verba

Mud is a not-quite-coming-of-age-story. It centers on 14-year-old Ellis (Tye Sheridan), during the summer vacation before he starts high school, becoming aware of the complexities of adult life. His parents are going through a rough patch and he has his first (problematic) romantic relationship with a girl. Also, while looking with his best friend Neckbone (Jacob Lofland), for a boat reportedly beached in a tree by a recent flood, he runs into the enigmatic stranger Mud (Matthew McConaughey).

( Mud is hiding out, on the run...Collapse )

If you only enjoy films which move at a breakneck pace and keep you charged with adrenaline, don't bother. If, on the other hand, you enjoy films about about complex people with complex relationships, or about starting to grow up and losing a childhood perspective when on the cusp of adulthood, this is definitely one to catch.

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Anyone know of any good online tutorials for networking, from the basics of TCP/IP and lower layers, the relevance of the OSI stack, and core Linux network configuration (i.e. using iproute and other tools, not distro-specific front-ends)? Something that'll teach me how networks are supposed to work, not how to configure NAT.

I've tried figuring some of this out before, and every time I've looked, the bits that don't seem completely basic and obvious, use terminology without defining it, and generally make my brain leak out of my ears.

If not online tutorials, then book recommendations would be good.

I already know about Stevens, and I've got it down as the series to get if all else fails.

After 5 separate TV series franchises, and 11 previous movies, it seems stupid to complain that this sequel to a reboot is overly-derivative and unnecessarily cheesy, but it's true.

( It's not all bad. John Harrison (Benedict Cumberbatch), a top Star Fleet agent gone rogue...Collapse )

I remember reading somewhere that this Star Trek reboot was intended to appeal to people who weren't big fans of Star Trek. I suspect that J.J. Abrams has succeeded. If you don't have the original series and movies to know what's being ripped off, there's probably nothing bad with it, and quite a lot that's good. There's no technobabble and not much in the way of intergalactic politics. It's chases, fights, explosions, double-crosses, and plenty of banter.

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I don't get this movie, at all.

It starts off reasonably enough. Luke Glanton (Ryan Gosling) is a carny motorcycle stunt rider. At the end of a gig in a small town in New York state, he finds out he has a 3-month old son, Jason, from a relationship with Romina (Eva Mendes) the year before. Romina is involved with another man, but Luke quit his job anyway to try and find work locally, to help provide for his son. Work is tough, and he gets drawn into robbing banks for extra money.

( The trouble is that the film changes direction a number of times...Collapse )

That feels like I'm forcing things though. Maybe instead this film is meant to reflect real life, which can tend to be a series of loosely connected events, unsuited to having a narrative forced upon it after the fact. Or perhaps it's a piece of art for art's sake, and director Derek Cianfrance simply refuses to compromise its integrity just to make it more accessible for the masses.

Either way, while there is a certain amount to appreciate here, there's not that much to care about one way or another.

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Best of the best are probably "How to Get More Women in Tech in Under a Minute", "Permission to Suck", "Speech Recognition Breakthrough for the Spoken, Translated Word", "Duke University creates perfect, centimeter-scale invisibility cloak", "Lego Pop-up Todai-ji + Daibutsu (Buddhist Temple)" and "New $7 Cup of Coffee at Starbucks"

This is inspired by a dialogue I had with a friend some time ago who was trying to navigate the hell that is Adobe's PDF Reader installer. Well, I say "dialogue", but my half of it was mostly along the lines of "kill it with fire".

Anyway, I've been re-prompted to write the post by the story that Adobe wants the ability to easily roll out Flash updates removed from Ninite (HN). Ninite is an all-in-one updater which can keep plenty of Adobe (and other) software up-to-date with the latest security patches from Adobe, but without any of the bundled trialware/crapware/spyware that Adobe's own installers try to push at every opportunity.

My point is that PDF is an Open Standard, which means that there are a number of completely interoperable PDF readers out there. It's not like MS Word's .doc(x) format, which is cryptic and unexplained, which is why non-MS readers for Word documents can be of variable quality. Instead, it's more like HTML, which is also open and has a number of interoperable readers (browsers).

So, if you just need to read PDFs, you don't need Adobe Reader to do so. There are a bunch of other PDF readers linked from PDFreaders.org, which are almost certainly smaller, faster and more secure than the sort of crap that Adobe consistently puts out.

PDFreaders.org - share it with anyone currently stuck using Adobe Reader.

This does what it says in the trailer. It's Die Hard in The White House, and, as the "Die Hard" genre goes, it's actually a really good specimen.

( The first quarter hour or so is spent getting to know our hero, Mike Banning (Gerard Butler)...Collapse )

Well plotted, well paced, and well acted; if you like a good action movie with scumbags getting their just desserts, give it a try.

Does anyone (preferably one of our 6 mutual friends - asw909, glassrat, morecake, mr_s_face, ms_rivet or tiggothy) know who hyzenflay is, or how she became owner/moderator of the ugc_sheffield community, or why posts are now moderated?

Space pirate Mal Reynolds trying to flirt his way out of some kind of trouble with Federation Alliance officer Wesley Crusher:

The Mandarin (Ben Kingsley) is a shadowy terrorist intent on bombing the US and its strategic outposts, while Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce) is a molecular biologist working on the "Extremis" genetic enhancements of dubious morality. Iron Man Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), aided only by his girlfriend and business partner Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow), and War MachineIron Patriot Col. Rhodes (Don Cheadle) - because without an existential threat to humanity he can't call on SHIELD or the Avengers - must defeat these forces of evil and save the day. All while battling personal demons and insecurities brought about by the events in Avengers Assemble.

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Go for the big explosions, flying exoskeleton suits, and over-the-top villains, and you won't be disappointed. Try not to expect too much more though.