Here’s a Friday Star Wars video for you.
As Austin Hill tweeted, “Conspiracy revealed! 7 min video that will change the way you think about one of the important events of our lifetime”
Category Archives: Amusements
Why the Star Wars Prequels Sucked
It is a truism that the Star Wars prequels sucked. (Elsewhere, I’ve commented that the franchise being sold to Disney means someone can finally tell the tragic story of Anakin Skywalker’s seduction by the dark side.)
But the issue of exactly why they sucked is complex and layered, and most of us prefer not to consider it too deeply. Fortunately, you no longer have to. You can simply get “Why the Star Wars Prequels Sucked, and Why It Matters,” a short “Polemic on Aesthetics, Ethics and Politics. With Lightsabers.”
Really, what else do you need to know?
An example? Ok, the diner scene, and how it compares to the cantina scene. The cantina exudes otherness and menace. The diner looks like it was filmed in 1950s and then had a few weird things ‘shopped in. The scene undercuts the world which Star Wars established. Or the casual tossing in that Anakin was a virgin birth, and how after tying to one of the most enduring stories in western culture, the subject is then never referred to again.
Or the utter lack of consequence of anything in the stories, since we already know how they’ll come out, and how, by focusing on characters whose fates we know, Lucas drains any dramatic tension of of the story. The list goes on and on, and if you want to know why you hated the prequels so much, this is a short and easy read, and highly worthwhile.
Oh, and you’ll learn how Lando Calrissian is Faust. So go buy it already.
One last thing. Delano Lopez? That’s a name I hadn’t heard in a very long time. But he and I went to school together.
Giant Rubber Ducks
There’s a giant rubber duck in Sydney Harbor right now:
It’s apparently by Florentijn Hofman, who does this sort of thing.
My only other comment? Seattle, you’re doing it wrong. Where’s our rubber duckie?
Via “Sydney Festival Launches Giant Rubber Duck in the Harbor“, Pedestrian TV. (I believe there’s a typo, and the duck is 13.8 meters, not 138 meters.)
Rubber Duck on The Thames
The Gavle Goat’s Gone!
Webbkamerabilder visade hur bocken snabbt blev övertänd och totalförstördes innan brandkåren hann fram.
Or you can check the webcam: http://www.merjuligavle.se/Bocken/Bockenkamera/
The Gavle Goat is Getting Ready to Burn!
The Telegraph reports that the Gavle Goat for 2012 is up, and surrounded by guards, cameras, flame retardants, and arsonists.
Emergent Chaos has reporters on the ground internet, ready to report on this holiday story of a town, a goat, and an international conspiracy of drunken arsonists. Stay tuned!
This years goat is shown in its pre-fire state. Note the pre-positioned fire extinguishers surrounding it, along with what one might describe as an altogether insufficient fence.
[Update: It turns out that the goat is blogging this year. Mixed English and Swedish.]
Now Available: Control Alt Hack!
Amazon now has copies of Control Alt Hack, the card game that I helped Tammy Denning and Yoshi Kohno create. Complimentary copies for academics and those who won copies at Blackhat are en route.
From the website:
Control-Alt-Hack™ is a tabletop card game about white hat hacking, based on game mechanics by gaming powerhouse Steve Jackson Games (Munchkin and GURPS).
Age: 14+ years
Players: 3-6
Game Time: Approximately 1 hourYou and your fellow players work for Hackers, Inc.: a small, elite computer security company of ethical (a.k.a., white hat) hackers who perform security audits and provide consultation services. Their motto? “You Pay Us to Hack You.”
Your job is centered around Missions – tasks that require you to apply your hacker skills (and a bit of luck) in order to succeed. Use your Social Engineering and Network Ninja skills to break the Pacific Northwest’s power grid, or apply a bit of Hardware Hacking and Software Wizardry to convert your robotic vacuum cleaner into an interactive pet toy…no two jobs are the same. So pick up the dice, and get hacking!
TSA Approach to Threat Modeling, Part 3
It’s often said that the TSA’s approach to threat modeling is to just prevent yesterday’s threats. Well, on Friday it came out that:
So, here you see my flight information for my United flight from PHX to EWR. It is my understanding that this is similar to digital boarding passes issued by all U.S. Airlines; so the same information is on a Delta, US Airways, American and all other boarding passes. I am just using United as an example. I have X’d out any information that you could use to change my reservation. But it’s all there, PNR, seat assignment, flight number, name, ect. But what is interesting is the bolded three on the end. This is the TSA Pre-Check information. The number means the number of beeps. 1 beep no Pre-Check, 3 beeps yes Pre-Check. On this trip as you can see I am eligible for Pre-Check. Also this information is not encrypted in any way.
“Security Flaws in the TSA Pre-Check System and the Boarding Pass Check System.“
So, apparently, they’re not even preventing yesterday’s threats, ones they knew about before the recent silliness or the older silliness. (See my 2005 post, “What Did TSA Know, and When Did They Know It?.)”
What are they doing? Comments welcome.
Big Tex Burns
Something about this story just grabs me.
I want to hear him saying “I am the dread pirate Roberts! I am here, but soon you will not be here!”
Also, I’m sad that he wasn’t in Galve-ston.
Photo by GreyChr
Choice Point Screening
Stamford Police said Jevene Wright, 29, created a fictitious company called “Choice Point Screening” and submitted false invoices for background checks that were submitted to Noble Americas Corporation, an energy retailer firm located in Stamford. (Patrick Barnard, “The Stamford (CT) Patch“)
I don’t want to minimize the issue here. Assuming the allegations are correct, the company’s assurance in their trust of their employees is diminished, they may face compliance or contractual issues, and they’re out at least 1.4 million dollars, most of which has likely been spent. A good number of folks are having bad days, and I don’t want to add to that.
At the same time, I do have a number of comments.
First, Those background check services sure are expensive! I wonder how many people that was.
Hmmm, according to their website, “In the past six years Noble has grown from 1,500 employees to over 14,000.” I do wonder how many of the “background checks” came back with false allegations of past misconduct. If there were 14,000 people with no red flags, isn’t that something of a red flag in and of itself? I also wonder (in a law school hypothetical sort of way, and assuming with no evidence that Wright or an accomplice fabricated false reports on some people so that his fraud went undetected) what sorts of claims might be available to those denied employment based on those untrue statements?
Second, there’s something of a natural experiment here that lets us assess the value of background checking. Assuming Noble Americas Corporation runs a second set of background checks, I’m very curious to know how well spent that $2m* will have been: how many employees do they fire, having learned of something so heinous that the employee can’t be kept, and how many do they fire, having been handed a reason to get rid of a poor performer? (Naturally, those 2 numbers will be rolled into one.)
Lastly, there’s an interesting social engineering angle here. There’s a real company “ChoicePoint” now part of LexisNexis. (ChoicePoint was made famous for their awesome handling of a 2003 data breach, which this blog diligently covered.) So when naming a false background check company, Choice Point Screening seems like it might be a new brand for the company. An auditor, seeing all those background checks, is unlikely to focus in on the extra space. It’s a nice touch.