Got thinking, if Hank ever did make a real prima facie case that Walt is a meth cook or he's Heisenberg, Hank is far better off to bring Walt into his office, show him the evidence, and tell him to quit, then actually have DOJ prosecute him.
Politically, for Walt to get caught would basically destroy Hank's career, he'd be a laughingstock, if not indicted on suspicion that he was conspiring with Walt. If you don't think doing your job in law enforcement can cause that sort of problem, look up the real world cases of "Richard Jewel" or the two Border Patrol agents Ramos and Compean who got prison time and were later pardoned.

Here's a thought regarding Walt. He stops making meth, now a crime supervisor with pest control company of crooks now not robbing houses, can have them doing the cook, he never goes near the sites and they just get paid %age for the cooking, they deliver the product to a distribution point, the Phoenix guys pick up the meth, leave cash. Walt can have someone pick up the money to take it somewhere and DEA can follow him all day just like Hank did with Fring, and find nothing. I'm surprised Walt hasn't figured a way to have someone put a new bug not traceable to him in the DEA office. Or like Bud from movie "Wall Street," buy out the cleaning company and they sneak something in the place from time-to-time.

As for your old laptop, problem is it was designed for earlier period, perhaps they put less rich content; typical web page now has lot of content, often bandwidth heavy. Try this on a desktop: use Firefox to analyze just this page, r.click "View Page Info," General tab, 14K. Media, over 25 items including a flash player app! Each one of those has to be loaded along with the page if it wasn't loaded before and cached. And how good is the TCP/IP stack, was it tuned properly or did it get set wrong so it's fragmenting packets too much? Is it wired connection or wireless and is it 802B, G or N? And is that set properly? It could be throttling the connection and you might not even know.

I don't know if I can respond to either in 8 lines but I'll try. I think they want to show Walt is at the height of his powers, when one tiny little thing he didn't think about is about to bring him down. They cut to the scene were he admits to Hank that the "W.W." means him; I also expected - and was surprised they didn't include it - was the scene where Hank helps him bring a bag out of the house and asks why it's so heavy, what's in it? And Walt tells the truth knowing it's perfect because Hank won't believe it, "Half a million dollars in cash." I'll do the laptop in the next message, I'm out of room.

Roody_Yogurt wrote:First off, there's that fact that Walt is relying more on Lydia. We can only assume that Mike's predictions will come true and she will do something batshit insane, and that should be fun to watch.

Agreed. Mike was right about pretty much everything from beginning to end (even the fact that working with Walt was a bad idea) and I expect this one to come true too. With her connections I don't think it would be too hard for her to disappear and leave Walt hanging.

Roody_Yogurt wrote:The other thing is, knowing how the show is ultimately about Walt's downfall, it can be assumed that in the remaining shows, things are going to get a lot worse for several of the characters. Before this last episode, I would have guessed the main point of interest is whether Jesse was going to successfully get out, going from a character that was supposed to die in the first season to one of the only 'happy' endings.

While it wouldn't make for good television, with five million dollars in cash and Walt spiraling out of control, it would be in Pinkman's best interest to disappear. Get Andrea and Brock and get in the car and just drive.

Roody_Yogurt wrote:As much as the final development in the last episode was bad for Walt, it's probably even worse for Hank's future, and it was good to be reminded that Jesse isn't the only one we need to worry about.

Oh yeah, Hank's f'ed. Look at what happened to HIS boss after the Gus debacle. (Actually, getting fired in the BB universe is one of the better ways to exit, turns out.) But yeah, if Hank reveals to the department that Heisenberg is his brother-in-law, well, nothing good will come of that for him (at a minimum, his career is over). If Walt stops producing, will those Phoenix distributors he made the deal with come looking for him?

BB definitely seems like the kind of show that would kill off Jesse or Skyler or somebody like that just to show the collateral damage of cooking meth.

I have Tiny7 installed on my Dell mini 9. It works well and only has a 2gig footprint. Gotta have a gig of ram, tho. Dunno if that's a deal breaker. Plus if your processor is not fast then it will just be frustrating and who want's that?



THE
DRIP FEED
AARDVARK

Twitter is a piece of shit, yeah. I still use a flip phone since I figure I have internet available enough places that I don't think it's worth it to pay for a data plan. I *do* send tweets to my phone, though, from certain users. Whenever I get a tweet with an interesting link, I hop on my laptop browser and go to their user page, looking for that latest tweet so I can just click on the damn thing. These days, user pages are updated infuriatingly slow, and most of the time lately, the tweet won't show up until 20 minutes later.

As far as BB goes, I am more on Robb's side. It wasn't bad as a midseason finale (of course, the idea of midseason finales are sort of ridiculous in the first place)- I mean, it gave us a couple things to look forward to in the next half. Still, parts were very slow. Something prompted me to think, huh, is this the worst episode of the season (which would still make for a great season, but still)?

That said, I especially liked a couple things. First off, there's that fact that Walt is relying more on Lydia. We can only assume that Mike's predictions will come true and she will do something batshit insane, and that should be fun to watch.

The other thing is, knowing how the show is ultimately about Walt's downfall, it can be assumed that in the remaining shows, things are going to get a lot worse for several of the characters. Before this last episode, I would have guessed the main point of interest is whether Jesse was going to successfully get out, going from a character that was supposed to die in the first season to one of the only 'happy' endings.

As much as the final development in the last episode was bad for Walt, it's probably even worse for Hank's future, and it was good to be reminded that Jesse isn't the only one we need to worry about.

Flack wrote:I know the defacto techie answer is, "install Linux on that thing!" If you're just going things like web surfing and e-mail and whatnot, then yeah, that might help (assuming your hardware is supported and/or recognized by a major build). There are some really light Linux builds out there.

Yeah, I had no luck trying to install Lubuntu on a ... hmm, Pentium III system, I guess it was. Nor Puppy Linux. But the thing is, I realized that I need this laptop to act as a installer for my Atari 8-bit hardware. That leaves me stuck with Windows XP (or 7). Frustrating!

I think I will try to see if I can find a RAM upgrade for it. Oh, and a battery. The battery for this one doesn't work so I lose everything when the power cord is pulled.

What? Hi Jengo. No, don't -- don't --- nnnngh!!!


ATH0+++

AArdvark wrote:If anything, the internet has become so much eye candy that a person needs a muscular processor and video card in order to see and do the same stuff that was possible with a Pentium One twelve years ago.
Example: A ridiculous amount of broadband used to portray an 'inspirational' quote superimposed on top of an empty beach at sunset. I saw the same quote, same (ignored) message sent as an ASCII string many years ago. WTF.

I don't begrudge the method as much as the content.

It's goofy, isn't it? And I mean, I expect websites like The Onion not to work. They are streaming video and such there. (The Onion works fine.) But Twitter?!?!? That.... that enraged me.

Ah well.

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote:Nothing interesting happened except for the last 30 seconds. Wow, a bunch of guys we've never seen or heard off got offed? Really?!? And they all died the same way? INGENIOUS!

I thought it showed Walt spiraling down further. In the beginning (Crazy 8) he killed a guy that was about to kill him. Then you have Tuco, who he was going to kill because he was going to kidnap him and take him to Mexico. Walt has Jesse kill Gale as more of a chess move than anything. In this episode, this is Walt's first mass hit (10 targets), and (I think) the first one he paid to have done. So I think it was just another devolutionary step for Walt.

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote:Nothing... NOTHING new happened. It was recycled. It was a goddamn clip episode. [...] Fucking cook montage AND a fucking "non-characters got killed" scene. Wow, tremendous.

Again, I think that was the point. Look how mundane Walt's routine got. Cook the meth. Sell the meth. Stash the money. Cook more meth. Sell more meth. Stash more money. We know Walt was never interested in the meth itself. Based on the Gray Matter incident, I think Walt was out to make himself feel successful. He did that, he killed all those people, he started his own empire, and now he's bored and tired. And probably dying of cancer.

Now, with 8 episodes left, we have to know (a) what will Hank do with his newly discovered information, and (b) can Walt simply "walk away" from his newly formed empire?

I know the defacto techie answer is, "install Linux on that thing!" If you're just going things like web surfing and e-mail and whatnot, then yeah, that might help (assuming your hardware is supported and/or recognized by a major build). There are some really light Linux builds out there.

They say Windows 8 will run better on the same hardware than Windows 7, but I can't imagine Windows 8 would run faster than XP on the same hardware. If you purchased it in 2005, I assume it had XP installed on it.

If there's any way to increase the RAM on that thing, do that first. Pretty much the first thing I do with any system these days is either increase or max out the RAM.

I bought an Acer Aspire One netbook a few years back. A few months ago I loaded Ubuntu on it. I don't really know how to do anything in Ubuntu yet but I can tell you it works.

Mason currently has (I think) the fastest computer in our house. I bought him a $399 laptop from TigerDirect for Christmas.

If anything, the internet has become so much eye candy that a person needs a muscular processor and video card in order to see and do the same stuff that was possible with a Pentium One twelve years ago.
Example: A ridiculous amount of broadband used to portray an 'inspirational' quote superimposed on top of an empty beach at sunset. I saw the same quote, same (ignored) message sent as an ASCII string many years ago. WTF.

I don't begrudge the method as much as the content.


THE
SAME OLD CRAP
IN A NEW WRAPPER
AARDVARK

I took this to text messages, where Ben is trying to paint me as having a "unique" opinion.

I think that maybe Ben has forgotten some of the truly amazing episodes of Breaking Bad and now he is just sort of... well... he's sort of embarrassed by how Season Five ended. So like the "runt" of a litter of AIDS babies, he's not trying to nurse it into something it's not: a great episode of tele--


Wow. Ben just said the Season Five finale was better than the finales of Seasons One and Two.

Welp.

Welllllllp.

He's been on the road for days. I think we can cut the man a little slack, that's all. That's all I am saying.

Wrong thread.

But we can do this here.

Nothing interesting happened except for the last 30 seconds.

Wow, a bunch of guys we've never seen or heard off got offed? Really?!? And they all died the same way? INGENIOUS!

Dude, they make 8 of these a season. GIVE ME SOMETHING NEW. We already saw Walt acting odd and smug with people who could waste him. We already saw an episode were Walt is distracted by a fly.

(I will say this: living out here, you can understand why they did two episodes around the housefly.)

Nothing... NOTHING new happened. It was recycled. It was a goddamn clip episode.

And what kills me is that you are too blind to see it. Anything, literally anything they put out and call a "Breaking Bad" episode, you are willing to pronounce as the greatest thing ever.

Name two of the people who got killed in the cells. Now. NOW. Don't ask for the translation. NOW. Oh. YOU FUCKING CAN'T.

Fucking cook montage AND a fucking "non-characters got killed" scene. Wow, tremendous.

You loved it so much, tell me what season finales it was better than.

You are the only one who didn't like the midseason finale. All I can figure is somehow you misunderstood the episode or something.

I bought a laptop in 2005. I wanted the smallest laptop I could possibly fine. I was flying... well, a little bit more than I was before and because I didn't have luggage that had wheels, I was constantly carrying dozens of pounds of fucking bags around. So my main priority for a laptop was SMALL SIZE.

It is now 2012.

The laptop can't fucking run ANYTHING well. It's not that I am trying to run 1080p video on it -- websites overwhelm it. It was predictable that when "regular" people (marketing people... non-techies) got their greasy hands on the Internet, they were determined to ruin it for the rest of us. Case in point would be the websites that do not work.

WEBSITE #1
Twitter. Twitter is a site that lets you send 140-character messages to other assholes. This site does not work on my laptop, with 512 KB of RAM and the lightweight "K-Meleon" browser. This is laughable.

WEBSITE #2
Facebook. Facebook was SLOW AS DOGSHIT. This is a website that is supposed to not let you create paragraph beraks and post photos of your kids. This is pathetic.

WEBSITE #3
Google Image Search. I can't even remember which image I was trying to do a reverse search on. Google, however, will not display the "upload a picture" link if you are using K-Meleon. This browser is based on the Mozilla code, people. It's funny just how quickly Google has become the people they used to bitch about. It's amazing. In the space of six months they have become just as bad as Microsoft or Apple ever was.

I really don't want to spend money on another laptop. Even though I now have luggage that has wheels on it (thanks to the trip to Scotland I took a few years back) it's the idea that this thing is obsolete because non-tech-minded people got out and started fucking up the Internet.

I guess as a whole I would say this: if you can't program, or if you can't script or if you can't design hardware or if you can't create hardware or if you can't build your own computer and if you aren't white or if you thought the season finale for Breaking Bad season five was in any way "good" then STAY OFF THE FUCKING INTERNET. There's nothing for you here. Everyone, everywhere should identify as one or the other. I am just kidding, especially about the white thing. I am not kidding about the Breaking Bad thing.