As an alternate opinion for this thread, this is my most highly anticipated show this year. The drama, pacing, acting, and technical details in this show are completely unparalleled; its strengths heavily outweigh its faults. No other show comes close to the breadth HACF strives for.
Halt and Catch Fire (Season 1) available on Netflix
21–30 of 38 posts
Re: Halt and Catch Fire (Season 1) available on Netflix
#22Not in .au
Apparently Netflix is cracking down on users circumventing the geolocks on content -- but if you want to try, remember that ssh does socks5 (including DNS) proxying. Spin up a VPS at eg Digital Ocean or some other provider that has US presence, and simply:
ssh -D 8080 yourvps.example.com #or use putty on windoze
Not that you'll probably have to have "a US" Netflix account, unless they just use location data for determining what shows you're "entitled" to.
Same works for Amazon Prime, to eg. watch the free pilot of "Man in the High Castle": http://www.amazon.com/The-Man-High-Castle/dp/B00RSI5EHQ
Same deal -- you'll probably need to sign-out/register a "new" Amazon.com account. FYI.
Re: Halt and Catch Fire (Season 1) available on Netflix
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
I assume it steals every piece of data it can but this chrome extension works for US Netflix http://hola.org/
I mean honestly I just bought a VPN connection. Costs me $45 a year and (probably?) doesn't steal anything. I realized how much time I spent trying to find mirrors and torrents for things that were widely available to stream in the US, and decided it was more practical to spend the money.
I don't really think it's "legal". In fact, I don't see how this is any more or less legal than circumventing region blocks on DVDs etc. That happens to be legal in Norway, but as I understand it would be a breach of DMCA in the US. Not sure about Australia, but I think (?) you have just as draconian content/copy-protection laws?
That said, see my other comment for using ssh as a socks5-proxy. YMMW which is easier (VPN or "vpn" via ssh).
Re: Halt and Catch Fire (Season 1) available on Netflix
#24In all honesty I didn't really enjoy the series. I keep watching because it felt so alien. All the characters seamed very 1 dimensional, and the writing I felt like it was reaching and not really selling. If you can, watch it, make up your own mind.
Well, it's a good drama which happens to have a technological background. And it so happens, too, that this technological background is realistic, precise, and even historically accurate.
It's a good advance to make tech dramas approachable to the general public. If the series, as a work of art, is bad, in the end very few people will watch it regardless of its technological accuracy.
That being said, my inner geek agrees with you: too much drama. But again, maybe I'm not exactly the target audience.
Re: Halt and Catch Fire (Season 1) available on Netflix
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
During the reverse engineering scene I would assume that they are reading the BIOS which would have been stored in ROM (Read Only Memory). The ROM chip would have the same address and read control lines like any standard memory chip which could be read by setting the Address lines, the Memory Read, any additional/ancillary signaling and then reading the data lines. Once you had all the bytes read, you could in princi…
The Technical Reference Manual for the original IBM PC included a listing of the source code to the BIOS.
It was done on purpose, just to make it harder (sic!) to do IBM-clones, due to legal not technical reasons.
Cringely explains that in his Accidental Empires.
Re: Halt and Catch Fire (Season 1) available on Netflix
#26Can we change the link to http://www.netflix.com/WiMovie/70302182?trkid=13752289 so people can read the show information or add it to their queues before deciding whether they want to watch it?
"Sorry, Netflix hasn't come to this part of the world yet" on a blank page.
Kind of annoying, not even letting the possible future customers do some harmless window shopping.
Re: Halt and Catch Fire (Season 1) available on Netflix
#27Can we change the link to http://www.netflix.com/WiMovie/70302182?trkid=13752289 so people can read the show information or add it to their queues before deciding whether they want to watch it?
"Sorry, Netflix hasn't come to this part of the world yet" on a blank page. Kind of annoying, not even letting the possible future customers do some harmless window shopping.
This is my biggest issue with Netflix, even when you're in a country they offer the service in you can't browse their library as an unpaid member.
Also it seems ridiculous to me that I found the browsing experience in a physical blockbuster store easier to use than Netflix!
Re: Halt and Catch Fire (Season 1) available on Netflix
#28FWIW a lot of this history is covered in PBS's "Triumph of the Nerds" documentary without the dramatic license. Kudos to the producers for attempting to make BIOS reverse engineering look exciting, though.
Though it's my understanding that they could have just booted into DOS and performed list on the BIOS? (To get the compiled binary)
Re: Halt and Catch Fire (Season 1) available on Netflix
#29that show is so boring it does not come even close to the 1995 Hackers movie.
Re: Halt and Catch Fire (Season 1) available on Netflix
#30Can we change the link to http://www.netflix.com/WiMovie/70302182?trkid=13752289 so people can read the show information or add it to their queues before deciding whether they want to watch it?
Ok, url changed from http://www.netflix.com/WiPlayer?movieid=70302182.