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Review: Rise of the Planet of the Apes

2012-01-25T21:39:00.002Z

Rise of the Planet of the Apes

This reboot of The Planet of the Apes proved to be an interesting and intelligent movie about the ethics of animal research as well as an exciting SF thriller.

I think the work done to bring the apes to the screen both the CGI and the underlying performances of the actors was fantastic, very believable as apes and excellent in the way that the increased intelligence was implied.

Warner Brothers acquire the rights to Otherland

2012-01-21T23:04:00.003Z

The rights to the Otherland tetralogy by Tad Williams have been acquired by Warner Brothers. The fact that they have purchased the rights however doesn't mean that we will see them actually adapt the books into movies and in any case I think that a television series would be a better format.

It is a science fiction story told on an epic scale as each of the four books is several hundred pages long and they follow on directly from one another. Set towards the end of this century the eponymous Otherland is a virtual world made of many different realms many of which are based upon works such as Through the Looking-Glass, The Odyssey and The Iliad, The War of the Worlds, and The Wizard of Oz.

[via]

Review: The Artist

2012-01-21T18:53:00.000Z

The Artist

Not quite three weeks into the new year and I think that The Artist will be one of the contenders for my favourite film of the year. Fantastic charming movie that cannot fail to win over the affections of any viewer.

It is a brilliant idea to make a black and white silent movie about a star of silent movies whose life is turned upside down by the arrival of 'talkies'. The concept works so very well, I really didn't miss having dialogue and there are some very clever little touches that utilize the nature of the film.

What is it like to have an understanding of very advanced mathematics?

2012-01-14T23:22:00.002Z

Fantastic answer to that question by an anonymous contributor at Quora.com

What's Plan B should Windows 8 fail?

2011-11-23T12:03:00.003Z

Windows 8 Failure Could Set Off Tech Industry Chain Reaction

What's plan b?

Plan b should be an Office Everywhere initiative

Stanislaw Lem Google doodle

2011-11-23T11:42:00.002Z

To commemorate the 60th anniversary of Polish SF author Stanislaw Lem's first book Google have produced an amazing interactive animated doodle with art inspired by the drawings of Daniel Mroz used in Lem's short story collection The Cyberiad.

London cyber-security conference

2011-11-02T21:55:00.001Z

London has begun a two-day international conference focused on the threat from cyber-security attacks.

Representatives of 60 nations gathered to discuss how to tackle the rising levels of cyber-crime.

I hope when they discuss cyber-crime that they aren't focusing on intellectual property because the actual financial cost of copyright infringement as opposed to the trumped up figures given by the media pales in comparison with the real costs of cyber-crime such as fraud and identity theft.

Kindle Fire

2011-10-02T15:14:00.004+01:00

So in searching for a little more information on the new Kindle that Amazon have launched in the UK I stumbled across the fact that in the US they have launched two new additional model, a touchscreen version and the Kindle Fire. The Kindle Fire is a colour touchscreen dual-core tablet with a 7" screen and 8GB of storage, all for $199.One of the key features of the Kindle Fire is the Amazon Silk web browser that will dramatically improve the web browsing experience for the user by utilizing the Amazon Web Services cloud to act as a form of proxy server and carry out much of the computational load of displaying a webpage which might contain elements from many different servers thus requiring many requests to many different IPs.In addition through analysis of web requests flowing through the Amazon Web Services cloud they can predict the most likely next page a user might browse to and preload that page in the background as the user views the original page again decreasing the time waiting for a page to load.

Review: The Next Three Days

2011-09-25T15:35:00.002+01:00

The Next Three Days

Catwoman

2011-06-24T22:31:00.002+01:00

Catwoman 267cs 1, a photo by Meagan.Marie on Flickr.

Brilliant recreation of the awesome Adam Hughes picture. She makes a great looking Selina Kyle.

Review: The Hangover 2

2011-05-29T20:26:00.003+01:00

The Hangover 2

Leonard Nimoy in retirement

2011-05-28T21:29:00.001+01:00

io9's ideas for Terminator 5

2011-05-27T11:56:00.003+01:00

Following news that Arnold Schwarzenegger has decided not to appear in the next Terminator movie io9 offers some ways of continuing the franchise without him.

I'm not convinced that there should even be another movie following the misstep that was Terminator Salvation, but if it is to be then the producers could do worse than consider some of the suggestions from io9.

I was very disappointed that the television series Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles was cancelled as I felt that it had expanded upon the ideas of the first two movies in a brilliant way. However I think it very unlikely that we'd get a movie to resolve the plot of the series.

LA Noire

2011-05-20T14:24:00.002+01:00

Today is the UK release date for the much anticipated game LA Noire and following the review in The Guardian earlier this week it is one that is very much on my to buy list.

However I won't be buying it yet not because of the reported problems of consoles overheating when playing the game but because it would distract me a hell of a lot from the studying I should be doing.

In the meantime I will have to experience it vicariously through players comments on Reddit's The first few hours of LA Noire

The Hidden Message in Pixar’s Films

2011-05-19T14:36:00.001+01:00

Kyle Munkittrick explores what he sees as a core theme of virtually all of Pixar's movies that non-humans should be accorded personhood.

Obi-Wan Kenobi Is Dead, Vader Says - Galactic Empire Times

2011-05-11T20:41:00.001+01:00

Obi-Wan Kenobi Is Dead, Vader Says - Galactic Empire Times

Bats and Mistuh Jay sittin in tree

2011-05-08T18:48:00.004+01:00

I love this picture by Dan Hipp.

Eli Pariser: Beware online "filter bubbles"

2011-05-08T09:40:00.003+01:00

Great 10 minute TED talk about how the personalization algorithms of sites such as Facebook and Google are creating a situation whereby users only see things that they might be interested in.

That in creating such personalization for commercial reasons because it goes hand in hand with creating targetted advertisements there is the unintended consequence that important events get filtered out as irrelevant.

Doctor Who - The Curse of the Black Spot

2011-05-07T22:01:00.001+01:00

Apparently Henry Avery was a real life pirate who had captured a great treasure from an Indian Mughal and then disappeared never to be seen again.

It estimated that the treasure stolen from the Ganj-i-Sawai was worth £600 000 (roughly equivalent to $400 million in today's terms).

24 Hours Marston - Webcomic

2011-05-06T19:31:00.001+01:00

This is so brilliant.

24 Hours Marston

Sorry it took so long...

2011-05-02T12:44:00.004+01:00

[Source]

President Obama on Death of Osama bin Laden

2011-05-02T10:05:00.002+01:00

On the 8th anniversary of George W. Bush's infamous Mission Accomplished speech and also the anniversary of the announcement of Hitler's death comes the news that US forces have killed Osama Bin Laden during a firefight in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

This should be a cathartic moment for many Americans but I don't think that it will fundamentally change things in the world. This does not mean that our forces can withdraw from Afghanistan as the mission there has moved on significantly and Bin Laden has for a long time been an irrelevance in that arena.

Bartitsu

2011-04-23T10:37:00.003+01:00

Bartitsu is an eclectic martial art and self-defence method originally developed in England during the years 1898–1902. In 1901 it was immortalised (as "baritsu") by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author of the Sherlock Holmes mystery stories. Although dormant throughout most of the 20th century, Bartitsu has been experiencing a revival since 2002.

Richard Ryan, the fight choreographer for the 2009 movie Sherlock Holmes, has described the "neo-Bartitsu" developed for that project as being a combination of "Chinese Boxing (Wing Chun), swordplay and elements of Brazilian Jujitsu." This "movie Bartitsu" was said to be an modern interpretation of the classic Victorian Bartitsu style.

This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Bartitsu".

Ethics of the fur trade explored in Kill It, Skin It, Wear It

2011-04-16T13:53:00.008+01:00

I stumbled across the Channel 4 documentary Kill It, Skin It, Wear It on YouTube today in which chef Merrilees Parker explores the ethics of the fur trade.

Parker admits to liking fur, but can she kill it, skin it and still wear it? She want to find out if it's possible to source ethical fur as we source ethical food. Contains graphic footage of animals in distress, slaughter and butchery which some viewers may find upsetting.

I had pretty strong feelings going in that however ethical the fur trade might be that I could not ever find myself supporting it and the documentary largely didn't change my position. I did however find myself somewhat convinced by the trapper whose selling of pelts came as a byproduct of controlling the population of wild animals that threatened the livestock of farmers.

I feel there is a fundamental difference between farming animals for meat and farming them for fur even if the end result is the death of an animal. This might not be a completely rational position but I value the human need for food much higher than that for fashion.

American Gods Headed To HBO

2011-04-15T19:39:00.001+01:00

Neil Gaiman's fantastic novel American Gods is to be adapted for television for HBO and Neil will apparently be co-writing it.

I'm very glad of this because although it could have worked as a film I think it would benefit from a slower pace and length afforded by a small screen adaptation.

Little girl joins the Dark Side, is promptly kicked out of the Jedi Academy

2011-04-12T12:49:00.001+01:00

I'd love to have a daughter that would do this, and as we all know being a Jedi youngling can end quite tragically. [via]

Jessica Rabbit as slave Leia

2011-02-21T21:33:00.001Z

A Love Song for Jabba the Hutt by ~JimSam-X on deviant ART

How to Be Wise

2011-02-01T21:46:00.002Z

How to Be Wise

from wikiHow - The How to Manual That You Can Edit

Wisdom is not book learning, not instantly obtainable. Indeed, wisdom defies exact definition for to define it too tightly would be to curtail the breadth of its potential for self-growth. Wisdom comes with time, experience, and the willingness to maintain an open-mind about the world and all its people. While wisdom accumulates over the years, it requires constant filtering to remove the prejudices and bias that also accumulate, as well as constant reflection and a willingness to challenge one's own beliefs and values on occasion.
The essence of wisdom tends to be lauded in all cultures, and is often viewed as a state that leaves you calm, able to think through things before acting upon them, and not be someone who is easily caught up by the myriad fads and crazes pulsing through society at any time. Wisdom includes an ability to stand back and take in the bigger picture while still admiring the details that make things function well. With time, a wise person grows deeper in knowledge but does not abuse that knowledge by shutting out others or claiming to be the sole repository of ideas and answers; instead, a wise person willingly shares what they have learned and enables the growth of others willing to listen.
Confucius once said that "By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest." These ideas are explored throughout the article, which is a starter guide for the person keen to focus a little more on the gaining of wisdom.

Steps

Know yourself. While time-consuming and sometimes challenging, it is still easier to learn about everything and everyone else in the world than about yourself. The hardest journey is often the one that requires looking inside yourself honestly to work out what drives you and what beliefs, opinions, and biases you hold within. Unless you're willing to know yourself well and learn to love both the strengths and weaknesses within you, it is difficult to be wise. If you don't know yourself, you're more likely to succumb to covering up weaknesses and overplaying strengths instead of practicing self-acceptance and being honest. Knowing yourself provides the space in which you can err, grow, and forgive yourself as you journey through life.
- Be careful of the term "self-improvement". While this term means well, it presumes we're all a mess at the core and need sorting. Even if that is true, it does not help you any to be vulnerable to the advice drawn from another person's journey and to try and replace your experiences with theirs. By all means learn from the experiences of others who have made journeys of self-discovery but don't make the mistake of believing that their journey is the right one for you or that you can simply replace your experiences with theirs. You must do the hard work alone.
- Be wary of any self-improvement advice that claims to have "secrets". The only "secret" to self-improvement is that it requires hard work and constancy. Beyond that, you can fiddle at the edges (attested to remarkably by the massive success of the self-help industry) but you cannot change the reality of having to do the work of personal introspection and reflection on the world yourself.
Realize that you know nothing. The wisest of people have long been those who realize they actually know very little – often in spite of decades of learning and reflecting. The more you think about people, things, and events, the more it becomes clear that there is always more to know and that what you do know is but a pinhead amid all knowledge. Acceptance of the limitations of your own knowledge is a key to wisdom.
- One of the key barriers to wisdom is over-reliance on or expectation of "expertise". We live in a world sold on the importance of expertise as a panacea for everything, including our own effort of thinking. Granted, many (certifiable) experts are clever and they do know a lot about their specialty. But to equate expertise with wisdom is to conflate the meanings of each term – expertise refers to someone's high level of knowledge in a distinct field, whereas wisdom refers to the broader concept of being able to see the bigger picture of life, to have considered responsiveness to all the things life throws at us, to live calmly reassured of life's purpose, and to never assume that there is necessarily an answer but still to be comfortable living with that reality.
- Mary Jaksch advises that now and then we need to adopt "beginner's mind".[1] This is the mind of a person starting afresh, being challenged anew by doing something that you've never done before. This brings excitement into your life as well as having the potential to unnerve you because you're not an "expert" at it. In addition, she advocates "don't know" mind, a martial arts mindset that reflects the wisdom of the warrior. Rather than prejudging situations by what you do know, keep your mind open and tell yourself that "I don't know" and allow yourself to learn. When you cease to have a fixed idea of people, things, and situations surrounding you, you grow in wisdom because you soak up changes, new ideas, and don't set any person above or beneath you.
Accept that there will never be an end to learning. If you thought the learning ended the moment you left high school or college, then you're in for a harsh perspective on life. The idea of learning is far broader than textbooks and what the teachers tell you; constant learning is the ability to stand still and question things that happen to you and to grow from your life's experiences. The problem with thinking that learning stops the moment you decide it stops, is that you cease to grow at that point and become set in your ways and beliefs. And once you start believing that the thoughts, opinions, beliefs, and ideas that are in your head now are forever more all you ever need to know and trust, you shut yourself down to other people's perspectives and ways of seeing the world. This risks cessation of internal growth and being absolutely certain that anything you think or believe is right while anything that challenges your beliefs or thoughts is wrong. Anais Nin neatly summed up this need to continue learning: "Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death."
Take time to contemplate. Wisdom cannot be hurried and it certainly cannot grow when the mind is feasting on pop culture and fast living. It is essential to take time out from everyday living just for thinking and reflecting over your own activities and over the wider happenings in the world and beyond. If you don't do this, you risk being reactive rather than proactive, an intellectually lazy response of not being bothered to make sense of the world yourself and happy to be carried along by the current.
- Practice being proactive by learning how to plan and strategize your efforts in life. Planning and strategizing requires downtime to think, somewhere quiet and away from the hubbub of people's demands, raucous TV programs, and relentless online opinions.
- Talk and do less; think and feel more.
Learn from suitable mentors. Find people whom you respect and believe emulate the values and ideals that represent a wise way of living life. Look for people doing the things you find interesting and of importance. Ask those people questions and ask them for feedback on your own ideas. Listen with great care to what they have to say, for you will learn much from their experience and reflection. When in doubt, ask your mentors for advice and guidance; while you don't necessarily have to agree with what they have to say, it will certainly give you food for thought.
- Read the writings of philosophers and social commentators who have covered the topic of wisdom. There will be many differing understandings of what it means to be wise and wide-ranging exposure to others' opinions and ideas about wisdom is also helpful "mentoring".
- In your fields of interest (work, home, hobby, sport, pastimes, etc.), read about other people's experiences. While you won't necessarily respond to similar situations in the same way that they did, knowing how others before you have dealt with situations that you're likely to face is an excellent source of foundational knowledge to help your own mind work out how you'd respond and to trigger new ideas and skills from within you.
- Watch happy people and soak up their joy. You don't even need to ask them for advice – simply watching and listening to their joyous interaction with life can teach you a great deal about how to embrace a more joyful outlook.
Move on from living a life of "shoulds". Listening to other people's "shoulds" is a surefire way to curtail your own sense of self because "shoulds" are a species of other peoples' insecurities being visited on you. If you listen to them too much, they begin to drive your life. Let go of other people's standards of how they think your life "should" be (their own life should be enough of a handful for them). Find your own moral pathway and follow it, and minimize the "shoulds".
- With respect to "should have dones" from the past, let go of them. Hindsight is the means by which you fool yourself into thinking you could have been wiser back then. There is no point reaching back and positioning yourself for a wisdom that did not arise when sought. By all means learn from the experience and be ready to adjust your approach to life's situations as a result, but avoid getting stuck into the place of no return where "should have done" rules your life. This soon leads to "I never get anything right" self-pity and can easily drain you of self-confidence.
Be unhurried. Be still at least once a day, to allow yourself time to rest and to stop taking in the rush of the world. Being constantly busy, feeling indispensable, or worrying incessantly about being seen as inadequate may make you a paragon of workplace virtue but it does not make you wise. Stop. Listen. Stand still. Take in what the unhurried perspective brings to you.
Be humble. Is it wise to toot your horn and to sell yourself all the time? The business and marketing world have convinced us it's a necessity, because we've managed to turn ourselves into commodities in need of a good sales pitch, and business language frequently reflects this. However, there is a huge difference between acknowledging to yourself and others that you are good at doing something and exaggerating a range of skill sets beyond your comfort zone just to keep up with the competition. Being humble is not about abdicating your self-worth; rather, it's about being realistic and only emphasizing all that is good and capable within you. In turn, people will know that they can depend on your reliability for those traits. Being humble is wise because it allows the real you to shine through. Humility also ensures that you respect the abilities of others rather than fearing them; the wisdom of accepting your own limitations and connecting with other people's strengths to bolster yours is infinite.
Be gentle. Gentleness rests at the heart of wisdom. It is a way of life that respects all beings, and also insists on gentleness toward yourself. If you push yourself too hard all the time, you won't find wisdom; instead of embracing your imperfections, you'll always be running from them, which prevents you from discovering inner peace. Being gentle with yourself allows you to gain wisdom through self-respect.
Question everything including yourself. If you're fond of preaching generalizations to reinforce your set world view, you'll be prone to accepting anything that aligns with your mindset, no matter how poorly constructed an opinion or argument it may be. An inquiring mind probes, and seeks for holes in information. This doesn't mean you have to discard the information or beliefs but you do need to understand when your view of things is shaky or based on tenuous assumptions. When you're questioned and your own opinions are proven untenable, the wise reaction it to keep searching for more solid and reliable explanations and to cease defending the indefensible.
- There is no reason to think your own answers are right. And there is even less reason to think that your current answers will never change throughout your life. As you grow and change, so too do the things you once thought set in concrete. Allow for this growth, and you will gain in wisdom.
- Often the answer lies in the question – take heed of what caused you to ask the question and within that rests the heart of your concern. Use the question to find the answer.
- Avoid following the herd. Being wise requires standing back and assessing whether it's just socially condoned or the latest fad rather than good and useful. If being part of it won't improve your quality of life, why participate? Reflect carefully before leaping.
Be responsible for yourself. Do what's right for you in life; deep down most of us know what this is and yet we live in a world where it can very easy to avoid self-responsibility and to offload the blame on the government, the school system, our neighbors, the TV, the weather... And the voice of duty also allows us to circumnavigate self-responsibility through unquestioning adoption of the advice of parents, teachers, friends, and anyone else who feels they have the finger on the pulse of who we are instead of figuring out these responsibilities for ourselves. Only you can know who you are and only you can be responsible for your ultimate choices. If you've spent years doing what was right according to someone else's standards rather than your own, you're not being responsible for yourself. Change the job where nobody recognizes your talents and find one where people will discover the tiger within. Move on to a housing situation where you're comfortable, not cowering. And find a way to earn a living that doesn't compromise your compassion, care, and interests. Self-responsibility, including learning to accept the consequences of making your own decisions, increases wisdom.
- Don't suppress your feelings and emotions. To do so is unwise and unhealthy. Emotions have a way of finding an outlet and if you've ignored them under a thin veneer of professionalism or trying to be "strong", the eventual outburst of emotions can be uncontrolled. Being responsible for yourself includes nurturing your healthy emotions and dealing promptly with your negative emotions rather than avoiding them. A wise person embraces feelings and intuition (gut feeling) as part of their whole and learns how to listen with care and discrimination to feelings instead of stifling them.
Keep life uncomplicated. For many people, a sense of meaning in life is "created" from being overly busy and by complicating everything from work to love. Complexity can make a person feel important and wanted but it is not wisdom. Rather, it's a form of distraction from oneself and from dealing with issues in life that really do matter, like questioning what your purpose is and what life is all about. Complication rules out reflection, leaves you vulnerable to the mysticism of expertise, and can cause you to make things harder than they need to be. Keep it simple and wisdom will flourish.
Avoid being media addicted. Related to keeping life uncomplicated and not following the herd, detaching yourself regularly from media is a vital part of being wise. Small doses are fine but anything that saturates you and controls your thinking is an abdication of the self and the need to think. When media dominates your day and night and you believe you're best pals with the movie stars, the internet entrepreneurs, and the top 100 bloggers, then it's time to clear the fluff out of your head.
- Linked with keeping your life uncomplicated is the need to keep yourself free from communication overload. Media saturation in your life is not about learning learning or increasing your knowledge. Unfortunately, much media is repackaged and you already know it but convince yourself it's news. Be selective and read that which enhances your understanding of world affairs rather than simply confirming your existing knowledge. And as already stated, question everything.
Be there for others. Share your wisdom with others to help guide them. As a mentor and teacher yourself, you can help other people learn about critical thinking, embracing feelings, loving lifelong learning, and trusting themselves. Bear in mind that wisdom is not about the fairytale image of the wise old man stuck in a cave on a mountaintop; keeping apart hermit-like can easily border on contempt and dislike for your fellow humans. Avoid the elitist temptation to use learning as a barrier against others; knowledge is for sharing not hoarding, and wisdom will only grow when exposed to everyone else's ideas no matter how confronting they may be. And beware navel-gazing; reflection time is important but so is time spent giving back to people the knowledge, skills, and love that you have gained.

Tips

When you ask others, learn to give credit, and receive it when due.
Often, take the time to relax and take a look at the world around you.

Warnings

If you use logic to make decisions, consider this: When you have too much doubt in your reasoning, it will be hard to make those decisions.
Some decisions you will doubt, because your decisions are only as valid as your reasoning, which - at times - you may think is not at all valid. But without decisions, you may not attain the things you want. No article can advise on how to balance these needs, that is up to you.

Related wikiHows

Sources and Citations

↑ Mary Jaksch, How to live life to the max with beginner's mind, http://zenhabits.net/how-to-live-life-to-the-max-with-beginners-mind/

Article provided by wikiHow, a wiki how-to manual. Please edit this article and find author credits at the original wikiHow article on How to Be Wise. All content on wikiHow can be shared under a Creative Commons license.

Review: The Green Hornet

2011-01-30T17:30:00.002Z

The Green Hornet

Review: The Loved Ones

2011-01-29T17:30:00.002Z

The Loved Ones

"Fuck you" Sign language performance

2011-01-15T20:22:00.003Z

Really cool interpretation of the brilliant Cee Lo Green's Fuck You.

Review: The Company Men

2011-01-15T17:30:00.002Z

The Company Men

Review: Devil

2011-01-09T17:30:00.003Z

Devil

John Marston and son.

2011-01-08T17:27:00.002Z

Fantastic video game-inspired works by artist Emily Carroll. My favourite is this piece inspired by Red Dead Redemption. [via]

Review: TRON: Legacy

2010-12-24T17:26:00.002Z

TRON: Legacy

Review: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1

2010-11-30T17:30:00.002Z

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1

Con man or Taliban agent?

2010-11-23T22:18:00.004Z

As many people have believed for years it seems that the US is not perfect at identifying members of the Taliban.

Although to be fair American officials say that they were skeptical that the man claiming to be Mullah Mansour was really who he said he was. Nevertheless he managed to convince enough people for long enough to not only meet President Hamid Karzai, but also make off with a substantial amount of money that was supposed to facilitate the brokering of peace.

Still unsure as to the man's true identity there is speculation that the con man might actually be a Taliban agent.

Assassin's Creed cityscape

2010-11-19T13:02:00.002Z

Talking to Your Kids About Star Wars -- A Public Service Announcement

2010-11-18T13:00:00.003Z

They Live: a cult classic explored

2010-11-08T23:32:00.001Z

Jonathan Lethem dissects the cult classic They Live in this fascinating Salon article.

I think They Live is fantastic and there is a lot more going on it than just the ridiculously long fight scene between Roddy Piper and Keith David, the film is a quite an intelligent social commentary. [via]

His Face All Red

2010-10-31T20:00:00.001Z

A spooky web comic tale for Halloween "His Face All Red,"[via]

Halloween Thriller

2010-10-31T14:01:00.002Z

Also try travelling the Organ Trail. [via]

How to Ditch Big Brother and Disappear Forever

2010-10-30T19:08:00.003+01:00

Lifehacker's Jason Fitzpatrick writes

So you've decided you want to drop off the map and leave Big Brother behind. It's harder than ever in our always-connected world, but if you're ready to plan your big vanishing act, here are a few tips to get you started.

How to Disappear: Erase Your Digital Footprint, Leave False Trails, and Vanish without a Trace by Frank M. Ahearn and Eileen C. Horan gives the low down on disappearing and starting your life over.

Bruce Schneier - Reconceptualizing Security

2010-10-29T21:06:00.001+01:00

[via]

2010-10-28T13:35:00.001+01:00

I'm sorry, but there's not enough air in here for everyone. I'll tell them you were a hero.

Review: The Social Network

2010-10-23T23:30:00.001+01:00

The Social Network

Review: The Town

2010-10-02T22:21:00.001+01:00

The Town

The Walking Dead opening titles - fan art

2010-10-01T22:12:00.002+01:00

THE WALKING DEAD "Opening Titles" from Daniel Kanemoto on Vimeo.

Daniel M. Kanemoto a fan of "The Walking Dead" comic book series has created an animated opening titles sequence for the upcoming television series. Using as a source the original comic book artwork by Charlie Adlard & Tony Moore he has produced a piece of work that rivals the best of that produced by professionals.

I cannot wait for the series to start and look forward to seeing the real opening titles and how they compare to this.

Review: The Girl Who Played with Fire

2010-09-03T17:30:00.001+01:00

The Girl Who Played with Fire

One Button Arthur

2010-08-25T13:42:00.003+01:00

One-Button Arthur: Puzzles, quick thinking, and a lot of clicks.

683 clicks in my case.

Those charge up to jump ones are a killer.

Justin Bieber sounds incredible

2010-08-18T10:23:00.003+01:00

How to make Justin Bieber sound incredible: slow him down 800 percent

J. BIEBZ - U SMILE 800% SLOWER by Shamantis

Prepare for ZERO HISTORY by William Gibson

2010-08-07T15:41:00.003+01:00

[via]

100 Million Facebook account details on BitTorrent

2010-07-29T22:17:00.001+01:00

The BBC reports that details of 100m Facebook users has been collected and published online via BitTorrent.

The BBC story takes a little less freaked line than The Telegraph, but it's not as if this was a security breach that caused private data to be exposed as Facebook says this was all public in any case.

Ron Bowes of SkullSecurity reportedly wrote a program to download millions of the public profiles of Facebook users in order to assist the development of the Nmap Security Scanner and the Ncrack tool by creating a database of usernames typically used by people.

Mr Bowes said his original plan was to "collect a good list of human names that could be used for these tests".

"Once I had the data, though, I realised that it could be of interest to the community if I released it, so I did," he added.

Mr Bowes confirmed that all the data he harvested was already publicly available but acknowledged that if anyone now changed their privacy settings, their information would still be accessible.

"If 100,000 Facebook users decide that they no longer want to be in Facebook's directory, I would still have their name and URL but it would no longer, technically, be public," he said.

It has been played down by people who have likened it to creating a telephone directory. However the question of whether users explicitly consented to be in such a directory is not easily answered as Facebook's privacy settings seem to be too complicated for a sizable percentage of their users to understand.

Infographic: Where Did the Money to Rebuild Iraq Go?

2010-07-28T23:57:00.001+01:00

[source]

Review: Toy Story 3

2010-07-25T22:28:00.001+01:00

Toy Story 3

Monaco is mine

2010-07-23T17:59:00.004+01:00

Monaco is the winner of the Seumas McNally Grand Prize at the 2010 Independent Games Festival.

It looks and sounds like a cool and interesting game, unfortunately no word on when it will be available.

Description:
Steal from the rich, keep it for yourself! Monaco is a 4-player co-op crime caper inspired by classic French heist movies and set in modern day Monte Carlo.

Review: Inception

2010-07-18T18:15:00.001+01:00

Inception

Our tree

2010-07-11T22:16:00.001+01:00

P7110055, a photo by electricinca on Flickr.

England v. Slovenia

2010-06-23T12:08:00.003+01:00

The England squad made a visit to a South African orphanage this morning.

"It is so good to put a smile on the faces of people with no hope, constant struggling and facing the impossible" said Sipho Umboto, aged 6.

Edit 15:22
Goal! Jermain Defoe! England 1-0 Slovenia

HTTPS Everywhere

2010-06-18T14:47:00.002+01:00

EFF and the Tor Project have launched a Firefox extension called HTTPS Everywhere. The extension forces the browser to connect using https with every website that offers the facility to do so. With the increasing occurence of sidejacking of web sessions where the site only uses SSL for authentication but not for the whole session this extension should be installed by everyone.

Patrick Stewart knighted at Palace

2010-06-03T14:52:00.003+01:00

The BBC reports on Patrick Stewart's knighthood ceremony and how he paid tribute to the teacher that first encouraged him to perform.

The Yorkshire-born star said he would be celebrating his knighthood with Cecil Dormand, the teacher who first encouraged him to consider acting as a profession.

"He was the one that put a copy of Shakespeare in my hand [and] said, 'Now get up on your feet and perform'."

Although a republican I think that this is a very well deserved honour to bestowed upon him.

LEGO Aircraft Factory

2010-05-29T14:29:00.002+01:00

This is amazing, a machine that is completely constructed from LEGO that builds small LEGO aircraft.

Lost: The End

2010-05-25T23:51:00.005+01:00

Yet another brilliant television series has come to an end and I'm left without a single bit of must-see television now that Lost has gone the way of The Wire, The Shield and Six Feet Under.

However unlike those three series which had really satisfying finales I was left feeling slightly unsatisfied with how Lost ended. But then on reflection I'm not sure I could have ever been entirely satisfied however many loose ends the producers tied up and in fact if they explained every single thing I would be dissatisfied that they'd chosen to do that.

I was emotionally satisfied by the ending and there were some extremely moving moments in it, especially for me when Sawyer and Juliet were reunited. The bit with Hurley and Ben at the church was quite touching as well.

It seems to me that the idea of the flash-sideways as a way for the characters to learn to let go was brought to another level with the finale which became about us the viewers learning to let go and move on with our lives too.

Lost 6.15: What They Died For

2010-05-19T09:27:00.005+01:00

The Man in Black has changed his plan and now intends to destroy the island using Desmond's unique gift. Perhaps he succeeds and the result is the parallel timeline where the Island was on the ocean floor seemingly sunken.

The proverb "Be careful what you wish for, it might just come true" occurs to me and the Man in Black causes his own destruction when he destroys the Island because their natures are intertwined. He is part of the Island.

Everyone seems better off in the parallel universe. They might not be perfectly happy in their lives, but they are on the whole happier and not suffering as they have in the primary universe. The only exception I can think of is Bernard and Rose, perhaps Desmond and Penny too, but there seems to be some hope for happiness for them in the parallel universe.

Amy at Glastonbury Tor

2010-05-08T22:27:00.001+01:00

P5080031, a photo by electricinca on Flickr.

Election day 2010

2010-05-06T15:05:00.001+01:00

Well I've gone and cast my vote in the local community centre and was stuck behind a woman who was not allowed to vote because she was a foreign national I think and a little old lady who was casting a proxy vote for a friend and was a bit confused about how to go about it.

For the first time in along time I don't feel like I'm wasting my vote as I've moved from a safe Tory constituency to Bath which is a relatively safe Liberal Democrat seat. There was some worry that the bloke that David Cameron parachuted in might sway some of the electorate but Don Foster has campaigned well and has attracted a lot of the young voters. There has apparently been record numbers of students registering to vote here.

On a national scale though I'm a little depressed as it seems that the Tories might get a majority or near as damn it that they can do a deal with Ulster Unionist party.

Review: Iron Man 2

2010-04-30T18:12:00.001+01:00

Iron Man 2

Digital economy bill passed - file-sharing will carry on regardless

2010-04-08T09:54:00.002+01:00

The Digital economy bill has been passed and now just awaits the Royal Assent.

I think that the bill will spectacularly fail to prevent file-sharing instead it will be a boon for the companies that offer virtual private networking services and teenagers will start file-sharing offline by exchanging DVD-ROMs full of MP3s.

I'm torn with regard to the Liberal Democrats as my local MP is Don Foster who not only voted against the bill, but was present at the barely attended second reading of the bill and argued against it in the debate. I'm displeased with the party as a whole though as they didn't oppose the bill and it was Lib Dem peers Lords Razzall and Clement Jones who sought to amend the Digital Economy Bill to allow site blocking for copyright infringement, although in the end that clause was dropped.

Review: Kick-Ass

2010-04-07T11:50:00.004+01:00

Kick-Ass

Mark Millar's comic book attracted some interest but the story was not controversial until it became adapted for the big screen. The idea of a 12 year old girl calling gangsters cunts and then slaughtering them was considered by many people who hadn't even seen the film to be beyond the pale.

But that is kind of the point. It firmly establishes early on that this is set in the real world where the bad guys can win and innocent people can be killed or gravely injured, but then it throws at the viewers the traditional tropes of the superhero action movie. It messes with how the viewer is supposed to watch and enjoy the film, it dares people to enjoy stuff that they see as immoral.

You are supposed to be unnerved by the violence performed by Hit Girl and see Big Daddy as being as monstrous as the mob boss Frank D'Amico.

Removing administrator rights fixes 90 percent of Windows 7 vulnerabilities

2010-03-31T16:34:00.003+01:00

Ars Technica reports that 90 percent of Windows 7 flaws fixed by removing admin rights

After tabulating all the vulnerabilities published in Microsoft's 2009 Security Bulletins, it turns out 90 percent of the vulnerabilities can be mitigated by configuring users to operate without administrator rights, according to a report by BeyondTrust.

Ars Technica describes this as being good news for IT departments who can reduce security breaches by mandating the use of the 'Standard User' account, but it is still not common practice for home users to do the same.

The fundamental problem with the PDF format

2010-03-31T15:22:00.003+01:00

Mikko of F-Secure argues that the ongoing security problems with Adobe Acrobat Reader, which is now the primary vector for malware having overtaken Microsoft Word sometime in 2009, is to do with fundamental issues with the PDF format itself.

Looking at the 756 page specification document (PDF format naturally) one finds details about how to embed all kinds of things from multimedia to executable JavaScript into PDF files.

So using an alternative to Adobe Acrobat Reader such as the Foxit Reader is not the solution as it is just as vulnerable due to including the same functionality as Adobe Acrobat Reader. There might be alternative PDF readers that simply render the documents without the additional functions but another secure workaround is to open them up in Google Docs.

Kentucky election fraudsters found guilty

2010-03-25T23:04:00.002Z

What might be just another run of the mill vote-buying scandal is made all the more interesting by the fact that some of the corrupting of the electoral process was down to exploiting a flaw in electronic voting machines.

The exploit was far more low-tech than those uncovered by the likes of Ed Felten as it exploited the poorly designed user interface which required voters to confirm their vote after they had pressed the button to make their voting selection. [via]

Edit: Bruce Schneier has of course covered the same story and has links to much deeper analyses of the situation.

Frenchman hacked President Obama's Twitter account

2010-03-25T17:01:00.004Z

BBC News reports that an unemployed man has been arrested by French police for hacking the Twitter accounts of US President Barack Obama and celebrities.

The unemployed 25-year-old was arrested on Tuesday after an operation lasting several months, conducted by French police with agents from the FBI.

He gained access to Twitter accounts by simply working out the answers to password reminder questions on targets' e-mail accounts, according to investigators.

This is the same method that was famously used to hack into Sarah Palin's Yahoo! webmail account and is yet another real world example of the failure of the typical password reminder function that the study by the University of Cambridge's Computer Laboratory showed.

As I wrote previously that until such time as the companies that use password reminder questions as a security method change the system they use I recommend that people give a nonsense answer to the question. Particularly people such as President Obama where such information is easily researched.

The Enchantress of Numbers

2010-03-24T16:32:00.001Z

Today the 24th March is Ada Lovelace day whereby blogger around the world celebrate the achievements of women in technology and science by choosing one to profile and write about. This year I'm cheating a little and am linking to an excellent animation produced by Brainpop about the life of the lady herself who was called "The Enchantress of Numbers" by Charles Babbage.

Twitter phishing attack via Direct Messages

2010-03-21T17:24:00.003Z

The F-Secure blog reports on a clever little phishing attack which uses Twitter's own Direct Message service and URL shortening services.

Unsuspecting users will click the link provided in the message which comes from somebody they know as Direct Messages can only come from people you follow on Twitter. However the message is likely coming from a hijacked account and points to a URL which hosts a phishing page that looks like Twitter and is asking you to sign in.

Once they have your credentials they then send messages to all your contacts and their web of hijacked accounts grows exponentially.

The good news is that Twitter has reacted quickly to this attack and are closing down the avenues of attack.

Playboy TV content played on children's television

2010-03-17T13:33:00.003Z

BBC News reports that adult content from Playboy was accidentally played out on children's TV.

TV bosses in the US have apologised after preview clips of the Playboy channel were accidentally played out on two children's channels.

"We're very, very sorry it happened - we know parents are concerned," spokesman Keith Poston told local news station WRAL.

"It took about an hour or so once we were notified of the problem to actually get it fixed.

"It was a technical glitch and unfortunately it hit at the worst possible time on the worst possible channels," he added.

The error occurred on the Kids On Demand and Kids Preschool On Demand channels where clips from Playboy TV appeared in the top right hand corner.

I suppose it could have been a glitch, but if it was then it was by accident the worst possible mix up of TV programming possible.

Also it seems to have taken quite a while for it to have been fixed once they had been notified. Could they not have simply taken the entire channel off the air?

It seems more likely to me that this was a deliberate and malicious act by somebody, perhaps a disgruntled former employee, that has access to the computer system used to automate the process of putting content on air.

Review: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

2010-03-13T22:19:00.003Z

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

The original Swedish title Män som hatar kvinnor translates to Men Who Hate Women, which is I think is a little literal. I prefer the enigmatic English title, but I think that this is typical of what I believe is a fundamental difference between Swedes and Brits.

Lost: Which dead people are really the man in black

2010-03-10T18:24:00.007Z

It has been established that the Man in Black is the Smoke Monster and has now taken the form of Locke.

Illana says that since Jacob is now dead that the Smoke Monster cannot taken any other form other than that of Locke. http://lostpedia.wikia.com/wiki/The_Substitute

Back in episode http://lostpedia.wikia.com/wiki/The_Man_Behind_the_Curtain Ben follows his mother into the jungle and then has a meeting with Richard who asks whether his mum died on the island?

We now know that the Man in Black can take the form of dead people whose corpses are on the island

But what about people who died elsewhere?

Can Jacob perform that feat but the Man in Black cannot? Was the vision of Emily Linus a manifestation of Jacob?

James Dyson's report Ingenious Britain

2010-03-10T16:29:00.002Z

BBC News: Conservative-endorsed report calls for science boost

Entrepreneur Sir James Dyson has produced a report titled Ingenious Britain for the Conservative Party urging a raising of the profile of science in the UK to help diversify the economy and boost growth. The pdf of Ingenious Britain can be downloaded here.

James Dyson makes the same argument that he made in 2004 when he gave the Richard Dimbleby Lecture, that the British economy cannot be sustained as merely a service economy. Manufacturing is the key to future success and it should lie in high tech goods where we have a competitive advantage. In fact things are now worse since his 2004 lecture as Design and Technology has been phased out of the curriculum at many schools since it was made non-statutory.

The part of Dyson's report title Education: Getting young people excited about science and engineering made me think about James May's Toy Stories which showed that although children initially thought stuff like Airfix and Meccano was boring that given the chance to play with it they really changed their minds. I think that if each class of maybe Year Six in schools were given a Meccano set then we'd end up with a lot more people going into engineering. Ironically Meccano is a British engineering success story that due to lessening interest in engineering in this country ended up becoming a foreign success story. Meccano is the only French manufacturer of toys that are internationally recognized, manufacturing part of its line in France.

Dyson believes that his company represents a good model for future British economic growth whereby the assembly of the products is done overseas but all the important engineering research and design is done in the UK. If this is to be the case for future success for British companies then we need to produce more engineers in our universities. In fact our universities are producing many excellent engineers unfortunately rather than being homegrown a large proportion of these are from overseas and many then return home to work.

Analysts of the current British economic crisis argue that the pound needs to remain low in order to boost are exports. But I believe that this does not need to be the case if the products we are exporting are competitive in ways more than just price. The Dyson vacuum cleaner is an excellent example, it is more expensive than rival vacuums but the benefits are worth the premium and it sells extremely well overseas even when the strong pound created an even greater premium in price than seen in the UK. Truly innovative products which are protected by patents can sell well and command a premium overseas.

Much of the British economic growth of the last few decades has been due to greater consumerism but the recession has brought that to a head and we are unlikely to see growth in the same way. We need to be more than just a nation of shopkeepers and because engineers are generally paid better than people in the service sector then a move to a greater proportion of the workforce being comprised of engineers is a good thing in many ways.

As well as the encouragement of engineering as a career choice Dyson recommends that tax breaks should be given in order to encourage investment into the development of innovations which do not necessarily produce a quick return on investment but do represent good long term growth.

Power 2010's Power Pledge

2010-03-07T21:48:00.003Z

Power 2010 have decided on the five key issues for their Power Pledge.

- Introduce a proportional voting system.
- Scrap ID cards and roll back the database state.
- Replace the house of Lords with an elected chamber.
- Allow only English MPs to vote on English laws.
- Draw up a written constitution.

I am a strong supporter of the reforms to introduce proportional representation and to scrap ID cards and roll back the database state.

I believe that the current first past the post system causes many people to feel disenfranchised because they live in a constituency which has strong leanings one way or another and their vote has no effect. This system all leads to negative voting where people vote for candidates for parties they don't particularly support but which represents the best hope of defeating the party they'd least like to win.

The ID card and National Identity Register should be opposed because of the principle that citizens in a free democracy should be allowed to go about their lives without government intrusion. The project is also so technically flawed that it will inevitably either have to be scrapped because it is unworkable in practice or because it causes one of the very problems than it is designed to combat namely an increase in identity theft.

The House of Lords should be replaced with an elected second chamber but the form of the second chamber needs to debated intelligently before it is implemented. Replacing the Lords is a major undertaking and there will not be an easy transition from the present house to a new wholly elected chamber.

Review: Exit Through the Gift Shop

2010-03-06T22:19:00.003Z

Exit Through the Gift Shop

Exit Through the Gift Shop is a fascinating documentary about filmmaker Thierry Guetta who in his failed attempt to make a documentary of Banksy became himself a street/pop artist and subject of this documentary film made by Banksy.

Thierry Guetta is a fascinating character who through his cousin became an unofficial documentarist of the street art world. It was all based on a lie though as he was never really making a documentary as all the footage just got stored away never to see the light of day until Banksy got his hands on it.

Having failed to make a coherent film out of his footage Guetta hands the task over to Banksy who casually suggests to him that he should try his hand at being an artist. Banksy later comes to regret having done so when he realises to what extreme Guetta has taken the comment as Guetta launches his career as Mr. Brainwash.

However I think that all is not as it seems and that the film has been produced by Banksy in order to quell the criticism that he has sold out. Once we get into the part of the film that chronicles Guetta's insane art exhibition as Mr. Brainwash it becomes an attack on the art scene and the bogus nature of the people that buy into it.

There is literally no originality to any of Mr Brainwash's work it is a mess of extremely derivative work that lacks a connecting theme other than it is derived from the work of artists that Guetta admires such as Warhol, Banksy and Shepard Fairey. He is however extremely successful as the show attracts huge crowds and he sells hundreds of thousands of dollars 'worth' of work.

Critics praise his work as being commentary on the work of other artists, but I believe that it isn't and that the fact that it is entirely lacking in substance is deliberate. I think that both his name and his work are a joke/scam being pulled on the art world and are a fabrication created by Banksy. That they will buy any old shit if there is the smallest connection to the name of Banksy

However now the illusion has become reality in a world where anything can be called a work of art if it is produced by and called such by a person that a number of people believe to be an artist.

Review: The Girl who Played with Fire

2010-03-06T10:06:00.004Z

The Girl who Played with Fire

The second book in the Millennium trilogy by the late Stieg Larsson is as good as There Girl with the dragon Tattoo. Dark secrets from Lisbeth Salander's past cause her to be implicated in the murder of a young couple. Journalist Mikael Blomkvist is also connected to the case and in trying to prove Salander's innocence uncovers things that powerful people do not wish brought to light.

Larsson has created in Lisbeth Salander a truly remarkable character and in this book has crafted yet another intelligent and gripping thriller around her.

What is your mother's maiden name and other insecure security questions

2010-03-05T21:29:00.004Z

Security Researchers at the University of Cambridge's Computer Laboratory have produced a whitepaper titled Evaluating statistical attacks on personal knowledge questions.

Aside from the fact that the answers to these questions are readily findable for celebrities and increasingly easy to uncover through social networking sites for the average individual the researchers found that even guessing is good enough to render the system insecure if carried out on a wide scale.

There is a strong result that anything named by humans is dangerous to use as a secret. Sociologists have known this for years. Most human names follow a power-law distribution fairly close to Zipfian, which we confirmed in our study. This means every name distribution has a few disproportionately common names—"Gonzalez" amongst Chilean surnames, "Guðrún" amongst Icelandic forenames, "Buddy" amongst pets—for attackers to latch on to. Combined with previous results on other attack methods, there should be no doubt that personal knowledge questions are no longer viable for email, which has come to play too critical a role in web security.

I think that until such time as the companies that use password reminder questions as a security method change the system they use I recommend that people give a nonsense answer to the question. If you are sure that you'd never need to use the password reminder facility then you could just use a completely unguessable random alphanumeric string as the answer. Otherwise it would be a good idea to choose something memorable as your nonsense answer that you consistently use e.g. Throatwobbler Mangrove unless inexplicably that does happen to be your mother's maiden name.

There has been other research in the last few years into this subject.

Microsoft researchers wrote Measuring the security and reliability of authentication via 'secret' questions

Time travel on Lost - the science bit

2010-03-04T15:41:00.003Z

A post on Metafilter reveals that Caltech physicist Sean Carroll recently tweeted that he was meeting up with Lost producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse. This was posted to the forums at Lostpedia, prompting immediate spoiler complaints ... so Carroll signs up and drops in to the thread to clear up the confusion, also offering some of his thoughts on the use of time travel in the show and referencing a longer blog post he wrote shortly before the start of the final season.

Qvantamon in a reply to the thread on Metafilter gives a rather homicidal theory of time-travel which addresses the notion of paradoxes.

Painquale, depends on how much you want to split hairs. You cannot alter your past (in the broadest sense - all the history of the universe as it played to cause your current state). Or, alternately, you cannot alter your past (same broad sense).

For example, let's say 50-years-in-the future Painquale is just about to enter a machine that will, in fact, just disintegrate him at the sub-atomic level into pure entropy (his existence is not really a necessary condition). There's a non-null chance (never mind the amount of decimal places) of, right now, 2010, zillions of sub-atomic particles just tunneling all at the same time into the exact same configuration as 50-years-in-the-future Painquale (supposing memory/thought process/sentience is a physical phenomenon). With a strong many-worlds interpretation, since that's possible (no matter how infinitesimally improbable), that's necessarily one component of the universe's wave function (that is, one "parallel universe"), so, there's definitely one branch where it just happened. If you ask that particular "time-traveling" Painquale, he'll tell you that he sure is a time traveller, he disappeared from the future and appeared here. Never mind that there's no causal relation between new-Painquale showing up and old Painquale disappearing, in his mind it's solid. He can of course, go ahead and kill present day Painquale, and it won't do shit, as there is no actual causal relation (as I said, that future where he thinks he came from may even have absolute zero chance of existing). Of course, he can decide to disintegrate himself again, and THIS pretericide-Painquale configuration can again also just show up randomly 50 years later, in another infinitesimally improbable branch of this same branch of the universe (again, no causality violation here). Again, no time travel, just particles tunneling around. But 2060 pretericide-Painquale of course has the whole causal relation in his mind. And no one around him will have any idea who he is (aside from being the guy who said he came from the future and killed Painquale), which is exactly his expected outcome of a time travel. Success, for all he cares, and no actual causality laws broken.

This is pretty much how I believe time travel would work if it were more than merely theoretically possible.

I was never happy with the solution for the grandfather paradox that some physicist put forth (I want to say Stephen Hawking because I'm surely I'm vaguely recalling a passage from A Brief History of Time) that somehow the Universe would conspire to prevent you from killing your own grandfather so as to maintain causality.

The discovery of the theory of parallel worlds suggested to me a better solution that you could indeed kill your grandfather (if that was your bag) because the man you'd be taking the life of would be from an alternate reality to the one you'd left.

I think that the notion of 'whatever happened, happened' can be preserved at the same time as that of being able to change one's past like Back to the Future's Marty McFly.

Our schools are failing our children

2010-03-04T14:49:00.005Z

In the US and the UK it is becoming the norm that children emerge from school ill taught and ill prepared for the world at large.

In the New York Times article Building a Better Teacher an argument is made that there needs to be a new understanding of teaching and be able to distinguish between techniques that really work and those that don't.

But I think there also needs to be discussions about what we need as nations from our schools.

Seth Godin believes school is a scam it is about brainwashing.

It may be that it is not the quality of the teaching at all but the diet of the pupils. Jamie Oliver in his campaign to improve school dinners found that with a healthy nutritious meal at lunchtime that there were improvements in the children's mood, behaviour, and even their ability to concentrate.

The hype of cyberwarfare used to control the internet

2010-03-02T14:57:00.001Z

Ryan Singel writing for Threat Level believes that the Cyberwar Hype Intended to Destroy the Open Internet

With the rise of the internet nation states have begun to lose control of their citizens and have introduced ever more draconian laws to try and claw some of that control back.

The War on Terror was framed as a Cold War for the 21st Century and a fog of fear was spread over the population but that fog gradually lifted as people realised that they were not at risk from Al Qaeda. Even when a nutcase tried to ignite explosives in his underpants on an aircraft and politicians and the news media spewed rhetoric about this dangerous new tactic of the terrorists and how something had to be done most people soon went back to their lives as if nothing happened.

The powers that be needed a new threat with which to control the people and the Chinese hacking of Google and others provided them the framing to do it.

Western civilisation is now under the peril of being destroyed by China in the form of computer hackers.

Google’s allegation that Chinese hackers infiltrated its Gmail servers and targeted Chinese dissidents proves the United States is "losing" the cyberwar, according to McConnell.

But that’s not warfare. That’s espionage.

We do not need as Mike McConnell to 'reengineer the Internet to make attribution, geolocation, intelligence analysis and impact assessment -- who did it, from where, why and what was the result -- more manageable.'

The 'Google hacking situation' was first and foremost the infiltration of the servers of private industry not an attack on the United States itself. The IT security of American companies is an issue where the US government can be of assistance by offering advice or notifying of specific threats that they've become aware of, but not through monitoring and controlling the internet.

Seth Godin on the nature of genius

2010-03-02T14:52:00.007Z

Genius is misunderstood as a bolt of lighting

Genius is the act of solving a problem in a way no one has solved it before. It has nothing to do with winning a Nobel prize in physics or certain levels of schooling. It's about using human insight and initiative to find original solutions that matter.

Genius is actually the eventual public recognition of dozens (or hundreds) of failed attempts at solving a problem. Sometimes we fail in public, often we fail in private, but people who are doing creative work are constantly failing.

When the lizard brain kicks in and the resistance slows you down, the only correct response is to push back again and again and again with one failure after another. Sooner or later, the lizard will get bored and give up.

Genius is the creation of 5126 prototypes before producing a viable bagless vacuum cleaner. Or to quote Thomas Edison "I have not failed, I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."

How did Hurley get out of his car?

2010-03-02T10:55:00.005Z

With all the mysteries that are confounding people in Lost it seems that for many people that THE most important question of Season 6 is:

How did Hurley get out of his car after parking so close to Locke's van?!

To my mind that's an easy one, he got out on the passenger side.

In this parallel timeline his best friend Johnny instead of deserting Hurley when he found out about the lottery win and running off with Starla, the girl Hurley was in love with, instead remains his best friend and becomes his driver.

Hurley is such a nice bloke that he gave his arsehole former boss Randy a job - of course he's going to have given Johnny a job too. And what better job than getting to hang out with your best friend and drive him around all day. Johnny is Turtle to Hurley's Vincent Chase. And Johnny is a pretty skinny guy so would easily be able to get out of the driver side after having parked so close to Locke's car.

When Hurley meets Locke in the car park Johnny had probably just gone off to get some fried chicken or something so the scene looks a little incongruous.

Review: The Crazies

2010-02-28T22:17:00.001Z

The Crazies

Review: DVDs of the week

2010-02-26T19:54:00.002Z

Hero

Incendiary

Red Eye

Zardoz

I aspire to be...

2010-02-22T22:14:00.003Z

We have become Richard Nixon

2010-02-11T17:11:00.005Z

Adam Curtis - A Film about how all of us have become Richard Nixon.

It Felt Like a Kiss, his previous work is available to view online once more.

A Timeline of the 'Lost' Universe

2010-02-02T15:23:00.003Z

The New York Times have produced an interactive Timeline of the 'Lost' Universe to help us Lost addicts keep straight in our heads the non-linear flow of the events of the previous five seasons.

24 Day 8: 9pm - 10pm

2010-02-02T12:29:00.001Z

The subplot involving Dana and her criminal ex-boyfriend continues to annoy me with the stupidity of both the character and the plot. Not only is she endangering national security by allowing this to distract from critical work but she's allowed herself to be blackmailed into becoming part of a criminal conspiracy.

Would her access of an NYPD computer network not be logged and cause questions to be raised? Plus is it likely that CTU would have a legitimate reason for the creation of a keycard to access an NYPD secure warehouse. Then all this is compounded by the fact that she then gives him a secure comlink so that they can communicate. Firstly there is no way that CTU would allow their staff to take equipment like that without having to sign it out and secondly any communications over their network would surely be logged if not actively monitored.

The subplot involving the radiation poisoning of the Russian mobster's son is almost as bad. The doctor informs the elder brother that the patient has received a dose of 400 rems, not necessarily fatal although a slightly higher dose did kill Harry K. Daghlian Jr. and states that a bone marrow transplant is needed. So far so good, but then the doctor talks about administering drugs to flush out the radiation and warning that radiation is transferable through bodily fluids. Complete rubbish unless the guy ingested some of the uranium there is no radiation in him to need flushing out or that could be transferred to anyone else in his bodily fluids.

Jack's impersonation of a German arms dealer was not all that convincing even if he did have a lovely graphical display for his encrypted bank transfer that went via multiple accounts to prevent it being traced.

Encrypting Locations Alpha 4 All Accounts Verified

Good scene with the CTU sniper taking out members of the Russian gang but did they seriously believe that a German arms dealer would come alone to a deal like this.

Lost Season Six Promo

2010-02-01T16:52:00.005Z

Lost returns to our screens this week for its sixth and final season and ABC has released a promo that of course poses more questions than it answers. Like who are the two new characters with the large hourglass and who are they giving a chance to redeem themselves?

Also The Guardian asks Matthew Fox How will Lost end?

Pick Locks Like a Pro

2010-01-27T19:58:00.002Z

Via: Online Education

24 Day 8: 8pm - 9pm

2010-01-26T12:53:00.002Z

Not much security related in this episode but still lots of ridiculousness and illogical situations.

The Russian mobster's son is dying of radiation sickness but he refuses to allows his other son to take him to the doctor. Really not much a doctor could do anyway as there is no cure a doctor can only alleviate the symptoms with anaesthetics (to relieve the pain) and antibiotics (to prevent infections due to the compromised immune system). If he is dying why not put him out of his misery?

Of course number one son ignores his father's sage advice and not only takes his brother to a doctor but then tells the doctor it's due to weapons grade uranium. I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure that it is not medically relevant to know what isotope it was that caused the radiation sickness.

I love Jack's hypocrisy, Renee is no more unstable and brutal than he's ever been. Even her death wish is not that far removed from some of his behaviour in previous seasons.

The subplot regarding Dana's mysterious past stands out so far as the most stupid element of this season so far. Would CTU agents be allowed unsecured cell phones at work? Apparently her past involves being an ex-con, as an accessory to murder! Then her ex-boyfriend seems to be succeeding in his plan to blackmail her into violating CTU security to give him classified documents that he can sell. I think that for any sane person that the risk of being caught and tried as a traitor would be a far worse scenario than merely losing one's job.

How did the nuclear material get smuggled into the US and how do they propose to smuggle it out again? Since 9/11 there have been great strides in outfitting US and borders with radiation detection equipment and under the Container Security Initiative foreign ports that are shipping containers into the US, so this would appear to be a nigh on impossible proposition in the real world. Ironically the CSI according to Misha Glenny in his book McMafia has created a situation where it is now easier to smuggle goods into the US because foreign officials can be bribed to overlook what a container might have in it as long as it does not have nuclear material.

Passwords in House M.D.

2010-01-24T12:20:00.003Z

In Episode 17 (Season 5): "The Social Contract" of House M.D. there is a throwaway line about how Wilson never password protects his patient files.

The context is that House has sent Taub to discover what Wilson is up to behind his back instead of going to the Monster Truck Rally with him. Taub brings back a bunch of print outs of deleted emails including one exchange between Wilson and a fellow oncologist from another hospital which included a patient file that couldn't be printed out because it was password protected.

I'd be very worried if doctors were not routinely encrypting files let alone merely password protecting them if they are sending them via email.

Review: Up in the Air

2010-01-19T23:01:00.001Z

Up in the Air

David Simon interview in Vice magazine

2010-01-15T23:55:00.001Z

Vice magazine interviews David Simon about The Wire, politics and his new TV show Tremé.