January 25, 2012
Whoops!
This is interesting:
A major security flaw was revealed in December 2011 that affects wireless routers with the WPS feature, which most recent models have and enable by default. The flaw allows a remote attacker to recover the WPS PIN and, with it, the network's WPA/WPA2 pre-shared key in a few hours. Users have been urged to turn off the WPS feature, although this may not be possible on some router models.
So I just now got into Railgun's setup menus and looked around, and I can't even tell if Railgun supports that feature, let alone how I might disable it. Ye Gods.
UPDATE: Here's more about it. Wifi Protected Setup (WPS) seems to be a protocol to allow things like printers to use Wifi easily. It uses an 8-digit access code, but evidently the real password space is only about 11,000 values, which means it can be cracked by brute force in just a few hours by exhaustive search.
I don't think Railgun has this feature.
UPDATE: Whew! I downloaded the user manual (something I should have done a long time ago) and searched it, and this feature is never mentioned. I think that means that the Netgear SRXN3205 doesn't have it.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Vista at
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There is normally an inverse correlation between convenience and security.
Posted by: Mark A. Flacy at January 25, 2012 06:54 PM (Lbkvv)
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For sure. But in this case they seem to have gone out of their way to fatally cripple it.
The PIN is 8 digits, one of which is a checksum. But it turns out that when you send an improper 8-digit PIN to the router, the error response code permits you to tell if the first four digits are right.
So you can search just those until you get the right one. Then you search the last three. An exhaustive search is only 11,000 attempts, not ten million.
This reminds me of the CSS protection on DVDs. Even though it was nominally a 40-bit key, in practice it was only 16 bits strong, which is a joke.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at January 25, 2012 07:17 PM (+rSRq)
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Plus, they didn't include a lockout. If the protocol had said, "OK, that's five incorrect tries for you. Come back an hour from how." plus hadn't weakened the search space, it really would be pretty secure.
Ten million possible guesses, at five guesses per hour, would be pretty good.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at January 25, 2012 07:21 PM (+rSRq)
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Heh.
The other maxim is "Return codes useful for figuring out what you did right or wrong are also great for bypassing security features."
(I'm a software weasel nowadays. US Army officer in my previous career path.)
Posted by: Mark A. Flacy at January 25, 2012 07:44 PM (Lbkvv)
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Checked my router (Netgear WNDR3700). It says that it will automatically disable WPS if it detects suspicious activity, but I turned it off anyway.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at January 25, 2012 08:03 PM (PiXy!)
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Heh, like those "Passwords" on computers in the movies which lock in each digit as it's correctly (randomly) guessed by brute force.
Why on earth do Hollywood writers keep giving us junk like that?
What's next "Please enter your password." "Incorrect, would you like a hint?" "Incorrect. Okay, I'll tell you what it is."
Posted by: Mauser at January 26, 2012 01:50 AM (cZPoz)
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I have yet to see a WPS-enabled router that doesn't have a button you have to push to turn the feature on, although that doesn't mean there aren't any. Also, on my low-end Trendnet router, the button lights up and flashes for about a minute, and after that time, IIRC, it disables WPS.
Posted by: RickC at January 26, 2012 12:03 PM (rMbV4)
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The button enables one of the modes. It doesn't have anything to do with the other one, and it's the other one that has the vulnerability.
But yeah, it seems that no one has routers with the vulnerable mode but not the button mode, so if your router doesn't have that button, you're probably safe.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at January 26, 2012 12:53 PM (+rSRq)
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I just read the article and I have to say, regarding this quote: "Some are leery of WPS because the Push feature means that anyone with physical access to a router or access point who has a WPS-capable client could have unauthorized access to a wireless network." This is what Raymond Chen calls being on the other side of an airlock. If you've got physical access to the router, you can already do anything you want.
Posted by: RickC at January 27, 2012 08:20 AM (A9FNw)
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The key is that if the button is enabled, momentary access to your router gives permanent access to your wireless network, and you'll never know it. The plumber
probably doesn't plan to download "special-interest material" whenever he's parked nearby, but it could happen.
My wireless router has WPS, and the button can't be permanently disabled, but the non-button mode can. By far the dumbest "feature", though, is making the router admin interface visible to wireless clients. They allow you to block all local access for clients, restricting them to surfing the public Internet, but if you wanted your iPhone to see your Mac for wireless sync, you'd have to let it see the admin interface as well.
-j
Posted by: J Greely at January 27, 2012 10:49 AM (2XtN5)
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I've got two wireless routers, one of which is too old to have WPS, but the other is almost brand new, and has many "features" that read like large gaping holes to the security-conscious. About the first thing I did when setting up that router was to get the list of MAC addresses of my devices, and then just enable the MAC white-list security mode. So my phone, tablet, printer, laptop, and a few relative's and friends laptops can connect, and nothing else can.
Posted by: David at January 27, 2012 12:56 PM (+yn5x)
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January 24, 2012
January 22, 2012
Mouretsu Pirates -- ep 3
Sato continues to tell his story in what some may consider to be a leisurely pace, which is to say that he's concentrating on his characters, not on trying to give us visual fireworks. He's got two cours to tell his story, and he isn't in any hurry.
For those like me who are in sync with his rhythm, it's going nicely. In this episode the yacht club begins its trip in the Odette II. After launch from the space station, they deploy their solar collectors.
Words sometimes survive their original use and continue to be used in other contexts. What I'm doing right now is called "typing", even though there isn't any typewriter involved. Indeed, I think it's been ten years since I last saw a typewriter. And I doubt there's a piece of physical type within a mile of here.
The solar collectors are on long mechanical arms, and in a nice conceit they're referred to as "masts", and specific ones are given names like "mizzen-mast". That was clever. Likely a lot of this came from the original light novels, but still credit where credit is due.
Turned out that one of the masts didn't deploy properly. The ship doesn't have any repair bots, so we have to have a space walk. Kane takes the first-year students out to have a look.
The Kane character is surprisingly interesting. Sato isn't falling into the trap of making him a perv, thank goodness. He's surrounded by nubile young things, but he isn't trying to sneak a peek, and isn't really affected by it. When he first introduced himself to the class he informed them that he was married. Whether true or not, the real message was "Don't mess with me." He's got a job to do, and he really is doing it well.
We get a nice example of operations in this one, including the way that the bridge monitors everything, and the way that everyone coordinates with one another. Kane uses the opportunity to help the students learn how these things are done; he doesn't outright take command and give orders -- which he could do. He's the faculty supervisor, and he's spent most of his life in space. But he wants the girls to learn; this is a training mission, after all.
The visuals on the ship continue to be nice. I like this design for the ship's bridge:
The one on the top left, sitting on the seat that sticks out, is the commander. Marika is sitting next to her and seems to be the helm. (Kane is in the lower right corner with his back to us.)
So we got a problem, and Kane will take six students out to try to fix it. So we get a locker room scene; first fan service of the series -- and not really very explicit.
And inevitably the suits are rather snug:
Chiaki continues to be an enigma, but one thing is clear: she wants Marika to become captain of the Benten-maru.
She shows up at the cafe again, to have another parfait. When she walks in, Marika and Mami greet her as "Chiaki-chan!" And she harumphs and says "Chan janai". More or less Don't call me 'chan'.
In terms of the series construction, there's a hell of a lot of foundation being laid in these episodes, but I think the most important thing is development of the relationship between Chiaki and Marika. You can see it happening.
Sato has said that he eliminated all romance from the story. Which suits me just fine. Romance subplots can make for good stories, but usually they're a crutch for writers who don't have anything else to say. It appears that this series has a deep enough story to tell that it doesn't need that.
I continue to be enthusiastic about Mouretsu Pirates.
UPDATE: Chiaki mentioned "the renewal of the Letter of Marque" as an event in the immediate future. What I've put together in my mind is this: if there is a captain from the designated family line, then renewal of the Letter of Marque is automatic. If there isn't, the Letter expires. There were originally several privateers, but by this point all of the other Letters have expired, for whatever reasons. That's why the Benten-maru is the only privateer from that planet still operating.
We don't know when the critical date is, but it doesn't seem to be really immediate. Were that the case, Kane and Misa would be in a lot more of a hurry to get Marika to agree to become captain. So we're probably talking months.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at
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My guess is that the deal with the Letters of Marque went down somewhat like this (And this is a guess, I've got the episodes a little higher than it's aired but I haven't watched them yet.)
When Sea of the Morningstar issued their letters of Marque, they probably stole the text from somewhere else; maybe from colonial-era Earth, maybe from somewhere else in history. Whatever original they took it from had a heredity clause that made sense for the original time period, but didn't make sense for them. There's no reason a country fighting a short-term independence war would need or want a clause like that. (They could always just issue more Letters if they needed them.) But they were losing the war and desperate, and honestly not paying a lot of attention. So they gave Letters with these clauses to anybody who would take them. And then surprisingly, they ended up winning the war. So they didn't need any more pirates, and stopped issuing them.
But the ones they'd issued were still valid, and since they couldn't retract them, they decided to let them just run out through attrition. And over the past 100 years the number of pirates has been slowly dwindling as captains die of old age and their heirs move on to pursue careers with less of a chance of being hanged. Whether there are other privateers or not I'm not certain, but it's a small enough number that Marika had never heard of them, and the other girls think nothing of taking an expensive cruise ship filled with girls who could be ransomed for vast sums of money on a jaunt around the solar system.
Posted by: tellu541 at January 22, 2012 04:33 PM (pJ1uW)
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That's about what I figure, too.
And part of the Letter of Marque is that it designates who the privateers are permitted to predate on, and who they are not. Privateers commissioned by this planet aren't permitted to attack ships from this planet, which is why the Odette II is completely safe from the Benten-maru.
I suspect there aren't any privateers who are permitted to attack ships from this particular planet, which is why no one worries about it.
Who, exactly, the Bentenmaru has been attacking hasn't been revealed, but once we find out it's going to open up a whole lot of plot -- because whoever it is, they can't be very happy about it.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at January 22, 2012 04:41 PM (+rSRq)
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I've seen complaints that the series is getting some details wrong (stars twinkling in space, the airlock door making noise once the lock is depressurized, etc.), but I really don't think they're trying to make another "2001: A Space Odyssey" here. It is a "romance," in the literary sense of that word. The uniform Marika eventually seems to be wearing should make that plain.
What I have been impressed with is that they seem to be doing a good job of conveying the "feel" of a society that's had routine space travel for a long period of time, but not so long that the technology has become "magical." It's common enough that high schoolers can do it, but it's a business that still needs to be taken seriously. It's something a lot of more "serious" SF I've watched and read hasn't managed as well.
Posted by: Dave Young at January 22, 2012 09:15 PM (ZAk0Z)
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Verisimilitude is a fine thing, but not when it gets in the way of good story telling.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at January 22, 2012 09:25 PM (+rSRq)
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There comes a point when you remove too much action from the story, proceed at too leisurely a pace, and it becomes a bore-fest. Yes, he's got two cour, but when the most exciting thing happening in an episode is the dock's breakers tripping, something is wrong here. I'm not asking for slam-bang action, but I think it's starting to err on the side of too much character-building, and the audience is beginning to wander off.
The title misled people into thinking it was going to be a schlocky fun romp. I can deal with that, but in the end, this is entertainment. It doesn't have to be the lowest common denominator, but it needs to draw an audience.
Posted by: ubu at January 22, 2012 11:14 PM (GfCSm)
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I think there's going to be more action in the next episode. They're going to be making a close pass on another planet in the system. They're also going to be on the far side of the sun from the home planet, in a blind spot. Either they're going to suffer some sort of mechanical malfunction or they're going to get attacked. (That's my guess.)
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at January 22, 2012 11:17 PM (+rSRq)
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Some of the objects twinkling in space could be objects orbiting Sea of the Morningstar and their albedos could be changing moment to moment.
I was kinda annoyed by the sound of the airlock door opening, but you can notice that all of the EVAers are connected to the hull (by boot magnets?) at that moment so there's an argument for sound conduction through the suits.
Posted by: jdonigan at January 23, 2012 03:49 PM (PKxNA)
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The airlock door opening sound wasn't mechanical. It was actually the equivalent of a ringtone. You *don't* want to know what some of the other ships' doors sound like...
Posted by: benzeen at January 23, 2012 08:43 PM (R9i5E)
Posted by: Dave Young at January 24, 2012 09:13 AM (DYR2Q)
Posted by: ubu at January 24, 2012 06:26 PM (GfCSm)
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Pacing note: the spacewalk appears around 75% into book 1 (the only one I own). I don't think they're skipping over anything significant; the four chapters are "Hakuou Girls Academy High School", "New Homeroom Teacher and Transfer Student", "Relay Station", and "Other Side of the Sun", plus a short prologue and epilogue that share the title "Pirate Course".
-j
Posted by: J Greely at January 24, 2012 07:56 PM (fpXGN)
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January 21, 2012
Bummer. No Hooters
Was sitting here a little while ago, thinking, "You know? It's been forever since I've gone out for breakfast. I hardly ever eat out at all, in fact. Maybe I should go out for breakfast tomorrow, just for a change. There's a Hooters near here, isn't there? It's supposed to have a good breakfast; maybe I should give it a try."
"Or at least, therer was a Hooters over there six years ago, the last time I walked past. I've never been in it, and I wonder if it's still there?"
So I got onto the web to check out the Hooters site. And it told me I had to install Microsoft Silverlight in order to view the site. No thanks.
Fortunately, the restaurant locater page didn't require that. So I plugged in my zipcode, and it told me that the nearest location was Jantzen Beach. Which is hell-and-gone away from here. It sure as hell isn't walking distance.
Jantzen Beach is where I-5 crosses the Columbia River. Google Earth says it's 10 miles as the crow flies, but the crow would be flying over Forest Park and the West Hills. By road it's more like 15 miles.
Rats. Oh, well; I'm too old for that kind of thing anyway.
UPDATE: There was a pastry shop over in the SW corner of the Beaverton Mall last time I was there, but that was something like a year ago. I wonder if it's still there?
Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Daily Life at
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Do you have a specific reason for passing on Silverlight? My company routinely develops Silverlight websites, and our customers don't report any reluctance of their users to it. I'm in the process of setting up my own blog, and I'd been planning on using Silverlight for my animated header images, as I have no interest in touching flash.
And supposedly, Stars Cabaret serves a mean steak. In for a penny, in for a pound...
Posted by: David at January 21, 2012 08:41 PM (Kn54v)
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More a matter of inertia than anything else, plus the fact that every new thing I install carries with it a small but nonzero probability of inducing behaviors I don't like.
I don't fix what ain't broke, and Silverlight doesn't fix any problem I'm interested in solving.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at January 21, 2012 09:03 PM (+rSRq)
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From the subject line, I had thought that you were going to write about something entirely different.
Posted by: Mark A. Flacy at January 22, 2012 12:12 AM (Lbkvv)
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I once installed Silverlight because it was required for NetFlix downloads, apparently for the DRM and streaming. It sucked so badly... it took over the WMP streaming I was using for Radio and couldn't keep up, it degraded performance so severely a simple audio stream was rendered choppy. But it sure did a good job of throwing up the sponsored ads in the player.
Needless to say, I uninstalled it and have never looked back.
Posted by: Mauser at January 22, 2012 03:16 AM (cZPoz)
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"I had thought that you were going to write about something entirely different."
Have you been to Hooters? That is what he was writing about. (Unless you were expecting a screed on spotted owl preservation...)
Posted by: Mikeski at January 22, 2012 08:24 AM (1bPWv)
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I had to laugh, as I scanned over this again, I thought "Bummers" which clearly is a restaurant for guys who are more interested in a nice round butt.
Posted by: Mauser at January 26, 2012 01:52 AM (cZPoz)
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January 20, 2012
Subversive hope
It's strange the things that come to you when you're sitting around bored. I remembered this and I've been giggling about it for the last half hour.
I like the fact that young people are rebelling against "sensitivity" and "politically correct" speech. The way they are in the habit of saying, "That's so gay!" -- and the fact that it makes middle-aged lefties mad -- gives me hope for the future. And naming a Magic-The-Gathering deck "hard gay" is magnificent.
As long as each new generation is unafraid to jeer and laugh at the previous generation's religion and pretension, then this country will continue to be great.
America is a land of continuous revolution. When the revolutions stop, when the revolutionaries are cowed into silence, then the America I love will be dead.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Weird World at
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You've never encountered
Hard Gay before? (Lucky you!)
Warning: link contains video of the Japanese entertainer in question.
Posted by: Avatar_exADV at January 20, 2012 09:16 PM (GJQTS)
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Avatar misspoke. It really should have been
Japanese "entertainer".
Posted by: Wonderduck at January 20, 2012 09:39 PM (f/6aJ)
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I thought that "hard gay" was the term for a particularly kind of character, as epitomized by Hapshiel and Kawasaki:
I didn't know there was a particular character by that name.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at January 20, 2012 09:42 PM (+rSRq)
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I think I first ran into that term in some blog's writeup of ep 5 of Macademi Wasshoi.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at January 20, 2012 09:52 PM (+rSRq)
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He's famous enough that you see knock-offs of his character pop up in anime. There's one in the background of episode 12 (broadcast) of
Haruhi Suzumiya He's posing in the hallway during the school festival IIRC.
Posted by: ubu at January 21, 2012 07:59 AM (GfCSm)
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Now that you mention it, I do remember seeing cartoon versions of him. Damned if I can remember where, though.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at January 21, 2012 10:50 AM (+rSRq)
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I know where it was. It was in a flash game I downloaded.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at January 21, 2012 12:59 PM (+rSRq)
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at January 21, 2012 02:58 PM (+rSRq)
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Gravion BD
Gravion was one of many shows that demonstrated why Gonzo really deserved to go out of business.
I just discovered that there was a BD release of Gravion and Gravion Zwei, and even though the story was stupid and the characters not believable, the one thing Gonzo really could do was to draw attractive women.
That's one of Sandman's bridge bunnies.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at
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I loved Gravion! It's one of my favorite mech shows.
Posted by: tellu541 at January 20, 2012 08:58 PM (pJ1uW)
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Avatar doesn't agree with me, but when I was watching Gravion Zwei it finally came to me that the whole thing was a huge sendup of the genre. Then I started to enjoy it.
When I watched the first series, I tried to take it seriously, and found it terrible.
Avatar and I had a big discussion about it, because he thinks the director was being completely serious. I think he had his tongue firmly planted in his cheek.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at January 20, 2012 09:04 PM (+rSRq)
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The -producers- didn't, that's for sure. All the promo material for the show played it straight. Very different feel from, say, Dai-Guard's promo material.
I still maintain that the essential feature of parody is the element that informs the audience that yes, the writer is in on the joke, the little twinkle of the eye of self-awareness. Gravion plays it straight all the way through the end... there's no "oh yeah, had you going there for a second, didn't I?" moment.
It wouldn't have even been hard! One character is all you need, and goodness knows it had a big cast already. Just one person to say "you sure that wasn't Krypton you came from?" somewhere.
Posted by: Avatar_exADV at January 20, 2012 09:31 PM (GJQTS)
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Mech send ups only work if you take it completely seriously. The concept of riding around in giant robots and punching each other is already ridiculous enough. We all know it's stupid already, so if you've got somebody in the cast pointing that out it ruins the whole thing. Imagine having Bugs Bunny ask Donald Duck why he can survive a half-dozen shotgun blasts to the face.
Posted by: tellu541 at January 20, 2012 11:00 PM (pJ1uW)
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January 19, 2012
Megaupload shut down
The Feds just shut down Megaupload and arrested the owners for piracy.
The four were arrested in New Zealand and presumably will be extradited.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Weird World at
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Copyright infringement, definitely; you'd be hard-pressed to find non-infringing content on services like Megaupload. The racketeering and money laundering charges, on the other hand, just look like abuse of RICO laws to get the result they want: it's easier to extradite a gangster than a web-site owner.
-j
Posted by: J Greely at January 19, 2012 02:48 PM (fpXGN)
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Interesting theory. Megaupload had an "uploader rewards program" that gave people incentives to upload stuff. I can see how you could at least put together an argument that doing so meant you were already outside the bounds of the usual DMCA safe harbor provision...
Posted by: Avatar_exADV at January 19, 2012 03:17 PM (pWQz4)
Posted by: Jaked at January 19, 2012 05:29 PM (ihVoM)
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Wow! The ants sure are pouring out of the nest, aren't they?
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at January 19, 2012 06:11 PM (+rSRq)
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So, they'll steal credit cards and publicize personal information from Stratfor subscribers for vague, mostly undeclared reasons (people and governments we don't like pay them to read wire reports and provide analysis!), but when it comes to RIAA and MPAA, all they'll do is whine and DDoS for a few hours?
What am I missing here? How is this supposed to make sense?
Posted by: BigD at January 19, 2012 09:38 PM (u0/7E)
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What am I missing here? How is this supposed to make sense?
That's what you're missing.
Less snarkily, the "membership" of Anonymous ranges from nearly rational libertarians to mindless anarchists. The actions attributed to them may illustrate their worldview, but are unlikely to constitute any sort of cohesive plan.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at January 19, 2012 10:17 PM (PiXy!)
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It's not an organized group. It's a mob.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at January 19, 2012 11:29 PM (+rSRq)
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Nothing so cohesive, Steven.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at January 20, 2012 05:29 AM (PiXy!)
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Mobs have a greater tendency to stick together and stampede in a single direction.
Posted by: ubu at January 20, 2012 07:35 AM (i7ZAU)
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January 17, 2012
Negima manga -- unpacking
Well, you see, there was this torrent which was a complete set of the Negima manga up through chapter 335. And I kind of downloaded it.
I spent about 2 hours unpacking it. Sheesh. Between inconsistent file naming, and weird directory organization, and the fact that about half of it was in RAR files (instead of ZIP), it was a real pain. But I finally got it all organized, into a series of directories, so that alphabetic order is also chronological order. And now I'm reading it.
I'm up to chapter 7, and I remember something I heard: When Akamatsu finished off Love Hina and wanted to do something new, the magazine told him he had to do another harem comedy. He didn't want to do a harem comedy, but they insisted.
So early on, Negima had all the trappings of a harem story. But he eventually morphed it into an action-adventure story, which turned out to be even more popular.
However, that hasn't happened yet as of chapter 7, and I can't say I really like this part. Where does it start getting serious? I'd like to do some skipping.
UPDATE: Looks like chapter 16 is where the Eva arc kicks in, and that's a pretty good choice.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at
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"about half of it was in RAR files (instead of ZIP)"
But RAR files compress better than ZIP files. (Apparently for the kind of people who use RARs, that's the only consideration.)
Posted by: RickC at January 18, 2012 07:28 AM (6gf75)
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It depends on how you do the zip. They're both using the same kind of compression, and most zip programs allow you to choose a compression setting.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at January 18, 2012 07:37 AM (+rSRq)
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The only nice thing I can say about RAR as a format is that the unpackers are less likely to mangle kanji and kana in file names (ZIP tools are usually not character-encoding-aware). Since most of the RAR files I see have already-compressed data in them, there's no significant storage savings. I wouldn't be surprised if, in addition to the fun Steven had with filenames and directory structures, he also found an inconsistent mix of PNG and JPG.
-j
Posted by: J Greely at January 18, 2012 09:24 AM (2XtN5)
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Yeah, that was the case, too. Lots of both, but no consistency. And you're right: PNG and JPG are already compressed.
None of the files had Japanese characters in their names, though. And I unpacked everything using 7-Zip.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at January 18, 2012 09:39 AM (+rSRq)
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The last time I did a mass download of a couple entire series, I wanted
to strangle someone after hours of trying to deal with different folder
and file naming conventions. For one series it was bad enough that I
gave up on the available torrent and went to the the website one
scanlation group and just downloaded all their chapters individually,
but even then they weren't consistent over time, as apparently they
didn't always get their raws from the same place and wouldn't rename
whatever the raw group gave them.
I actually gave serious thought to writing an application to produce a
defined folder and file naming scheme from a collection of archives, but
decided that I didn't have the time. But the next time I need to do a
'home software project' to polish some skills, it's at the top of my
list.
Posted by: David at January 18, 2012 11:22 AM (+yn5x)
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Also on topic for this thread: Negima is the next series on my list to catch up on. I've been reading it in actual paper form, but with the change in publisher that recently happened, it's now even more ridiculously behind compared to what's available online. I figure I'm going to download the whole series for a re-read and continue to the present. I'm not looking forward to the download and unpack part.
I recall enjoying the first part of the series, with some chapters being better than others. I very much remember that when the action really started, the ability to go back to the block of chapters dedicated to an individual haremette to refresh myself on character design and such was very helpful, especially in the sections where there might be a dozen or so very similarly drawn characters running around in the chaos of a busy page.
Posted by: David at January 18, 2012 11:30 AM (+yn5x)
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I still have nightmares of trying to organize Detective Conan manga, but nowadays has gotten much better (save for some bloody exceptions). Thankfully Traders for the most part let's me download neatly organized zip files.
Posted by: Jaked at January 18, 2012 02:46 PM (sQpfj)
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I have a utility called "batchname" which you can drag-and-drop large numbers of files and it will perform certain operations on their filenames for you.
It's not super-sophisticated, but it's good enough. There's another one that's vastly more powerful, but I don't need its abilities, and it's a lot more confusing.
It got used heavily in this particular process.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at January 18, 2012 03:53 PM (+rSRq)
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Do you have a link where I might find that piece of software? I tried a Google search, but got buried under SEO crud.
Posted by: Boviate at January 19, 2012 03:43 PM (q39AX)
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at January 19, 2012 05:46 PM (+rSRq)
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Ooh, I can definitely use that program! Thanks, Steven!
Posted by: Toren at January 19, 2012 07:00 PM (lsTaT)
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There's a different program called Bulk Rename Utility which is a lot more powerful, but also more confusing. I have it, but it turns out that Batchname serves for most of my needs.
But I thought I'd mention it, just for completeness.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at January 19, 2012 08:38 PM (+rSRq)
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Thanks, Steven. I'll be sure to check them out too, hopefully they'll turn helpful in emergencies.
Posted by: Jaked at January 19, 2012 10:41 PM (jV/tp)
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Blackouts
Seems like tomorrow is "Voluntarily screw up the Internet day". Wikipedia is going to shut down for 24 hours. And I just noticed that BakaBT is going to suspend their tracker for 12 hours. So don't get freaked if all your torrents suddenly turn red.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Weird World at
04:56 PM
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Noooo!
Wikipedia, like, what
ever, but BakaBT?!?!?!
Posted by: Pixy Misa at January 17, 2012 06:02 PM (PiXy!)
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Luckily it seems Google won't blackout, just place a big sign in their homepage.
Posted by: Jaked at January 17, 2012 06:10 PM (n+0qb)
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I didn't notice anything changed with Wikipedia until I turned off my script blocker.
Posted by: Boviate at January 18, 2012 09:30 AM (q39AX)
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Is that what's going on? I was just about to post that I hadn't noticed any difference in Wikipedia.
But I routinely run with a pretty heavy-duty Javascript blocker. And Wikipedia works normally for me. (Another win for Proxomitron!)
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at January 18, 2012 09:36 AM (+rSRq)
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January 16, 2012
Hardware and Software
Pete needs the ability to watch BDs from any region. Various people are proposing hardware solutions.
Maybe it's because I'm a programmer, but I prefer a software solution: AnyDVD HD from SlySoft. It's true that you have to buy it again every year if you want to keep up on new patches. (Well, someone has to pay for their effort keeping up with new forms of copy protection.)
And I suppose the biggest objection is that it lets you play your BDs on your computer screen, rather than on your living room TV. But for me that's no issue; I don't have a living room TV.
The fact that it is illegal to own it in the US (because of the DMCA) doesn't seem to be much of a deterrent to anyone. Besides which, all the hardware solutions others have proposed are equally illegal.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Weird World at
06:04 PM
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I don't think the "can't play on your living room TV" thing is much of an issue.
1) It takes a simple adaptor to convert DVI output (which is most modern video cards anyway) to HDMI.
2) You can get video cards that have nothing
but HDMI outputs.
...so you could use anything with an HDMI input as a monitor. I've played WoW on my 47" blab slab.
My $156 torrent box could be used to play BDs if I installed a BD drive. It would then cost more than $156 but the price would still be comfortably under $300, and using the blab slab's VGA input gets me 1920x1080 without a problem.\
Still not legal for multi-region BDs of course thanks to DMCA, of course.
Posted by: atomic_fungus at January 16, 2012 06:31 PM (4deSp)
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