Tag: Quora

Deano’s answer to: “Is Doctor Who a children’s show?”

Posted on by Deano in Q & A

I’m watching Doctor Who with my 3 year-old daughter currently… We haven’t hit a single classic episode that has scared her yet, mostly she just pauses the video to ask questions about what Autotons are, why Cybermen are bad robots, or how the dinosaurs trying to eat the Doctor’s land rover are “pwobably gonna hurt dere teef”.

The new series, though, is not something she can sit through. She gets really really quiet, and I know that when I pause it to ask if it’s scary, she’ll nod and give me a big hug, before we agree to save that for when she’s “sebben”.

So, yeah, maybe I’m bringing her in a bit early… But the classic eps are all 22-24 minutes, which is a good length, and we get to talk about all kinds of science, espionage, language, culture, and architectural topics that don’t come up at the park or preschool. Still, even I notice a huge difference in the seriousness in the newer eps, even the first season – it’s very clear that people are gonna die, regularly, perhaps even horribly, and they’ll stay dead.

So in short:

  • Classic Doctor Who is aimed at children… I’d say everything up until the Colin Baker generation is completely safe[*], even for a 3 year old.


(Classic Who: Scary? Image courtesy of http://www.ovguide.com/tv_season…)

  • And as Danielle Maurer says, I think the New Doctor Who series should be called more of a “whole family”, or even “parental guidance” type show. It’s not adults-only, but your kids should be really firm on fantasy versus reality stuff before they watch it.


(New Who: SCARY!!! Image courtesy of http://clariethelioness.tumblr.c…)

As for so-far-unmentioned adult SciFi, I’d add Life on Mars, which was originally a BBC One production, and later remade (and only semi-destroyed) for American TV. It features a modern police detective who is knocked out and wakes up in the 60s – adjusting to the new time and culture, trying to figure out how he got there, using modern investigation techniques, and even trying to solve a “cold case” or two before they are actually ever cold. No spaceships or aliens, it always reminded me a bit more of The Prisoner.

[* Colin and Sylvester McCoy’s runs were… not creepy, more like pandering 80s network interfered-with craploads. This was at a time when the BBC heads were actively trying to cancel the show, so it’s perhaps natural to expect some more over the top “what’ve we got to lose, and it may get ratings” type attitudes. ]

This answer originally appeared on Quora: Is Doctor Who a children’s show?

Deano’s answer to: “Is using an ad blocker in your browser unethical?”

Posted on by Deano in Q & A

From an internet user’s POV:

There was a time several years ago that I religiously installed adblockers and flash blockers at every machine I used. Ads themselves had gotten way out of control, and were very annoying to deal with. So I killed them all.

Then, maybe the last 2-4 years, ads normalized a bit, and seemed to “get” that they were getting too crazy, and pulled way back. Fewer annoying popups/popovers/popunders by legit advertisers. Perhaps native browser support for blocking being more widespread led to a sort of truce between browsers and advertisers? I got lazy with blocking, and just let things lie. I even, now and then, found ads I actually clicked on, as targeting has improved.

Anyway, within the last two years, full page skippable ads, float-in and mouseover ads are getting a lot more common again. They’re more relevant, they don’t slow my machine down as much as before, but they’re still interfering with my experience of some of the major websites out there… As a result, I tend to visit those sites a bit less, to filter them via rss feeds, or even just rely on friends and followers to surface interesting content via FB/Twitter.

If things progress any further the way they’re going, I’ll be back to blocking ads. Certainly, I’d at least like more random ads – retargeting tends to show me the same 4-5 ads on a given site over and over again. I may not look like much of a quilted lingerie wearer, but maybe I need a gift for grandma? Anything but more survival knives and weight loss advice. Please.

As a sometimes-advertiser, I honestly don’t see anything unethical about adblocking – it’s just another consumer signal, that basically says “I hate your ad!” It makes me get more creative, both to enthrall those who don’t block ads, and to come up with alternate, less-spammy means to reach the adblocked parts of my target market. How I do that is a story for another day, but suffice to say that by and large people are willing to give you time and attention, even when you’re selling things on the Internet, so long as you respect that time given, and in general the intelligence of such consumers. Those who do neither, deserve to get every last one of their annoying flash monstrosities blocked.

This answer originally appeared on Quora: Is using an ad blocker in your browser unethical?

Deano’s answer to: “Why do all the Batman villains always go to Arkham Asylum?”

Posted on by Deano in Q & A

From the question: All the Batman villains who are caught end up in Arkham Asylum*. They rarely, if ever, go to prison to serve life or death.

Superhero comic logic aside, what would be some good explanations for this? I am personally inclined to believe that Arkham is a Guantanamo Bay-of-sorts, where the villains are put, because they have been thwarted by Batman without proper legal procedure such as warrants, reasonable doubt, and so forth. This would also explain why people like sane villains like Catwoman have been thrown in Arkham.

What are your theories?

*As I remember; Harley Quinn and Selina Kyle were sent to a rehabilitation clinic at one point, though.

Taking the issue at it’s face, I’d say it’s likely a NIMBY problem – while dividing up the tough mental cases throughout whatever state Gotham is in might seem to be a good way to keep them from possibly colluding on an escape together, it’s just as likely that this would mean that less corrupt cities and towns would subsequently be threatened with potential reprisals during a villains inevitable escape.

Supervillains, in a sense, are the toxic waste created by superheroes – no one wants to address the natural byproduct of a “mostly good thing”, and where possible they pool the waste and store it in locations and communities that don’t have the political clout to prevent such outcomes.

Actually, taken in that light, it’s possible Gotham as a whole is somehow a functional internment camp for the worst of society in the DC Universe… Perhaps Batman’s secret mission is more about keeping everyone from escaping Gotham, a prison in the shape of a city…?

This answer originally appeared on Quora: Why do all the villains always go to Arkham Asylum?

Deano’s answer to: “How do you remind people that you did something very nice for them?”

Posted on by Deano in Q & A

You do another nice thing for them, as a ‘thank you’ for them letting you do the first nice thing…

(Photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/jst…)

If that doesn’t make them your guilt-ridden love slave (or at least prompt a sheepish thank you), then stop doing nice things for them, delete their email contact info, and burn their phone number; they are a lost cause.

This answer originally appeared on Quora: How do you remind people that you did something very nice for them?

Deano’s answer to: “Will different computer users inside one company (i.e. at one building location) normally share the same IP address?”

Posted on by Deano in Q & A

The short answer: No. All IP addresses for individual computers must be unique to allow for proper/intended network function.

The more complicated truth: Most users inside a company have “multiple IP addresses” – one local/internal IP address associated with their computer, and one or more external IP addresses, which map back to the local address via a process called Network Address Translation (NAT), and pass actual Internet traffic back and forth.

(Image snuck safely out of http://qwikstep.eu/search/get-ex…)

These external IPs exist, and continue to be used for several reasons:

  • The IPv4 address space, which most Internet ready devices still use is comparatively small, so assigning unique IPs worldwide to all Internet-capable devices is simply no longer possible[*]. The “new” address space, known as IPv6, has been in development for several hundred years, and will be rolled out “any day now” to consumers and business.
  • Because of this, companies use routers to translate between internal and external IP addresses, even on a one-to-many basis. While it is unlikely that a large company will use a single external IP for a given building/campus, it’s possible that whatever your internal IP address, external traffic to your single computer may hop between external IPs over time, or based on the service(s) you use.
  • Internal IP addresses also give you a nearly-unlimited and “free” supply (okay, a mere 18 million or so usable) of addresses, that you can organize as you wish. While most home Internet users are at least somewhat familiar with the “192.168.0.0/16” network, the other private address spaces are “172.16.0.0/12”, or my personal favorite, the “10.0.0.0/8”[“]. By contrast, external “Internet IPs” are usually leased through a hosting provider, and more IPs = larger monthly bill.
  • Most companies (or at least their ISPs) use firewalls and other security measures to protect from both external attack, and various kinds of internal tampering/espionage. These firewalls typically sit between the internal and external address spaces, and monitor traffic for suspicious behavior, blocking known exploits and recording log data to help forensically source unknown attack vectors after the fact.

Long story short – Yes, in many cases, everyone in a single location of a given company will share one external IP address, making it difficult to associate IP traffic to a specific user within the company[†]. For this reason, marketers, website administrators, hackers, and security and support companies will typically try to use other means (transparent GIFs, cookies, user registrations, “MAC IDs”, etc) to identify individuals as distinct from their associates within the company.

[* Actually, back in the day I worked at several companies and universities that used a public network address for all their Internetworked machines (often numbering in the hundreds or less)… It wasn’t until the advent of students needing their own IPs that most universities switched over. ]

[“ For more on the private network address space, check out the great Wikipedia entry here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pri… ]

[† Depending on the purpose of your question and individual network configuration, that could be a very good/anonymizing, or a very bad/incriminating thing. Best to just start deleting the wikileaks porn now, just in case…]

This answer originally appeared on Quora: Will different computer users inside one company (i.e. at one building location) normally share the same IP address?