Who wants to be a pushover?

I think it's about time for a TV recap. The summer show season is ending, and the fall season is about to begin. I've noticed that a lot of the reality shows are starting to be compressed... shows that took dozens of weeks last year have shrunk to numbers of episodes you can count on only one, two, or three of your hands.

What have I been watching? Let's see...

- Who wants to be a superhero? This show scores high on the ridiculous factor... and yet I continue to watch it. Possible alternate titles include "who wants to get inside Stan Lee's head?" or "who wants to be a follower?" It's all about Stan Lee's inconsistent application of heroic logic. It doesn't matter how well you justify what you do, because if it doesn't match Stan Lee's predefined expectation, you're gone. Statements like "I'll take that into consideration" translate to "you're as good as out." Don't try to game the system, because his logic and yours probably won't match. For instance, the episode in which everyone nobly rescued the people but got yelled at for not rescuing a dog. Um, okay? Oh, and can you say PRODUCT PLACEMENT?? Sony, esurance, blah blah blah. ECW star "superhero training"??? Yech. "Wrestling, stunt fighting... it's REAL." Double yech. That's exactly what makes me annoyed with the SciFi channel. In a way, it's kind of like those model shows, where people get kicked off for things like getting hypothermia during a photo shoot in freezing cold water. "REAL models don't give up even if they're about to die." It's all about willingness to sacrifice your life for your art. See my old "fashion conspiracy" posting for more info on that.

- Movies featuring winners of Who wants to be a superhero? Those Saturday 9 pm movies also make me annoyed with the SciFi channel. Yeah, so I recorded Mega Snake, which was supposed to "feature" the winner of Who wants to be a superhero, season 1. Oh, my. Fast forward through cheese... fast forward through cheese... fast forward through cheese... I passed through the first quarter of the movie. Then the middle. Then the last... Around 7/8 of the way into the movie I saw Feedback... and his role as a public service announcement guy, telling kids about the dangers of electricity. In all, it lasted about 2 minutes. Maan, I can only imagine what Season 2's superheroes are thinking. "All that work, and THAT'S my main prize???"

- A model life. Reinforcing the stereotype that models aren't the brightest stars in the daytime sky. For example, there was the Brazilian girl who thought she might know photographer's grandmother, who lived in Brazil approx. 50 years before the model was born. "No, I don't know her." Or Michelle, when told she was going to London: "I've never been to London. I guess I'll like it. They do speak English, for most of the part, except for a few of the words." Niice. And the most model-like, Angelika, was let go for mouthing off. Yeah, she deserved it.

- The new Bravo show, Flipping Out. Very funny!! That guy is seriously messed up.

- On The Lot. Will won! Yaay! He was my favorite. Do you think the end part (him walking up to the gates of his new studio) was staged? I have a feeling it was filmed before the actual finale.

- The IT Crowd. They're already halfway through the all-too-short season!! Season 2 has been funny, but not AS funny as Season 1. I just haven't found as many quotes that I want to integrate into my everyday life... like "getting on like a big house on fire" or "you stole it? but that's stealing!!" Hmm... I wonder how the US version will turn out...

- Chuck. I saw the pilot episode on a recent United flight. My response? As Roy's shirt said during IT Crowd Season 2 Episode 3, "Meh." It reminded me a lot of Jake 2.0, except for the electronics superstore part. It just wasn't that funny... But I'll let you make your own call. I think the pilot is officially showing next Monday.

- Without prejudice. Interesting show, but it doesn't live up to its name. A group of five people decide to give $25,000 to one of another group of 5 people for pretty much whatever reason they select. Take the "without" out of the title and you get a lot of what is used in the decision-making process. It's not a bad show to have on as background noise, though...

- Doctor Who. I like this show more and more every season!! I didn't think they'd be able to find a good replacement for Rose, but I was wrong. The most recent two-part episode shown on SciFi, "Human Nature/The Family of Blood" was excellent!! And Baines (the actor also plays Will Scarlett on Robin Hood) made a fantastic psycho bloodthirsty alien. The DVD comes out in a couple months...

OK, I think that's enough TV discussion for one night!!

It's just not possible

Just a quick posting to explain that I do not believe in hummingbirds. That's right. You can't convince me that they're real. Birds simply don't look like that... or move like that, for that matter. It's not possible. I think they're really puppets, or a Hollywood conspiracy, or something. There has to be another explanation.

And yet I couldn't find the puppeteer when I took these hummingbird pictures yesterday. Maybe you can see the strings in the picture. They must be there, 'cuz there's no way hummingbirds can possibly exist.

If it's on TV it must be true

This evening I saw an inspiring commercial for some weight loss pill. It inspired me to laugh. It wasn't the "eat all you want and still lose weight" part that caused me to want to roll on the floor laughing. It was the next part: "We couldn't say it on TV if it wasn't true!" Riiiiight. THAT should inspire confidence in their product. As we all know, everything on TV is absolutely true. Does anyone believe otherwise?

Case in point: that SciFi channel show "Mind control with Derren Brown." Yeah, sure, you can trust it (after all, it is on TV). Just be sure you pay attention to things like shadows (especially in the episode where he was doing mind control tests on twins). That's all I'll say on that topic.

Speaking of entertaining commercials, I also have to note the latest commercials from our modern day Richard Simmons: John Basedow. First it was his "get fit" videos. Then it was the "get fit" videos with the cheesy 80s-style theme music. Now it's a triple-length symphony of cheesy music, fitness videos, and--of course--advertising for his MySpace page (which apparently features even cheesier videos of him as James Bond or something). Faaan-tastick.

One last noteworthy commercial: the one for the movie Stardust. The commercials seemed rather serious, but the movie was hilarious!! Two (or more) thumbs up, absolutely. Go see it! NOW!!

Stop Wirelifting Dead

Wirelifting. You know, like shoplifting, except wireless Internet style. Do you hate it when your neighbors steal your bandwidth? Yeah, well, so does this guy. Check out his tips and tricks for discouraging neighbors from Intersquatting:

The Upside-Down-Ternet

We should build a statue in this guy's honor! Maybe in the shape of a nutria...?

The drought is over

The IT Crowd, Season 2 has started! The first episode aired on BBC on Friday night. I found it here. It was pretty funny (yaay for Richmond and Moss!), but based on my calculations, the next episode will be funnier. Why, you might ask?

Well, it all started with Season 1. Episode 1, pretty funny. Episode 2, extremely funny. Episode 4, really funny. The rest were funny, but not quite as funny. Following the pattern, that means the 8th episode will be very funny. Using some really tricky math that is way too complicated to explain to mere mortals, I have concluded that this means the 2nd episode of the 2nd season will be very funny.

And yes, I hyperlinked as many things in this blog as I possibly could.

Good ol' fun

This happened back in 2001, but that doesn't make it any less funny. I can just picture some young manager thinking this would be a funny joke:



"Toy yoda." And Snopes says it's true. Yay litigiousness. It reminds me of the little "I'll give you a hundred doll hairs" thing we did when we were 8 or do. Never did trick anyone with that. I wonder why not...

L33t hax0r pwned by Teen Jeopardy

Well, at least he got the final answer right...



Oops. Um. Spoiler alert for your left-coast types... Sorry. (ah, well, maybe it's just a rerun anyway...?)

Map Everything!

I just realized that Google Maps now allows you to embed maps in pages! Hooray! Is this new, or am I slow in finding these things? I guess they got tired of having people copy their imagery and post it to their blogs, etc.

For your entertainment, a demonstration, using the Jello Museum in Le Roy, New York as an example:


View Larger Map

How to use it: Find what you want to include in your map. Then click "Link to this page" (toward the top right of the page). Copy the link and/or HTML, and paste it into your blog, e-mail, or whatever. Note that it keeps your query terms in the link (q=blah blah blah).

While we're talking about Google Maps, check it out -- you can view imagery of Mars!
http://www.google.com/mars/

Map away!

Because privacy is overrated

As soon as I saw this, it reminded me of a certain little apartment in Iasi (that's pronounced "Yash"), Romania:

http://www.voltier.com/hot/

Melissa knows what I'm talkin' about. :)

Synchronization Rocks

Philippines. Prisoners + Michael Jackson = amazing choreography.



Or maybe they just have a warden who is really into dance...

Hen Lotto II

I'm one of about a dozen Americans who watches the Fox show On The Lot regularly. Tonight's episode... not so hot. America somehow voted Zach Lipovsky off, to my dismay. It really should've been Jason Epperson. Oh, well. At least Will Bigham is safe. He has consistently produced the funniest videos. His film this week--Yes Men--continued the hilarity trend. (note that it's not yet available at thelot.com. I'll edit my post and add a link when it's online)

And then there was Adam Stein's video. All three of the show's judges called it out as being the most creative of the night. Um, not so much. I'll post a link to that one as well, when they update the site. I found it very similar to two of my favorite Twilight Zone episodes:

- "Five Characters in Search of an Exit": (video) a bunch of dolls who don't know they're dolls in a bucket at a yard sale of sorts.
- "Stopover in a Quiet Town": (video) a couple is kidnapped by aliens and end up inside an alien child's dollhouse.

Was it just an innocent mistake? For his sake, I hope so!

Update -- Here are the video links:

- Will's movie
- Adam's movie

OK Computer

Defcon is now over. As you'd expect, the bottom line is that security is nonexistent, blatant holes are everywhere, and we should move back to paper and pencil communications (or maybe even stone tablets). The usual.

The conference was great. Here are some of the highlights of Defcon 15:

- 11 hours of classes with no breaks--yaay! Those of you who don't know me probably think, "surely she's being sarcastic." I'm not, for once. I like technology, I like classes and lectures, and I don't like breaks. I'm not just a workaholic, I'm an infoholic. If I'd taken a break, I would have missed something! I got tons of notes, too.

- The badge, as I mentioned in an earlier blog. Though sometime yesterday mine started freezing up. I noticed that the same thing was happening to other people too... I guess they followed the Microsoft model when they developed it. "Reboot required." (despite the glitch, the badge is still awesome)

- The whole issue with the NBC Dateline reporter. Yeah, I know, I talked about that already, too. It seemed to be the unintentional theme of Defcon 15.

- The poor guy in the "Hacking Social Lives: Myspace.com" (Rick Deacon's "assistant") who accidentally typed both his username and password in the login box... for a couple thousand people to see. Time to change the password for that account! And for all the other accounts that use the same password... :)

- Speaking of revealing passwords, I found the Wall of Sheep very entertaining. That's where they sniff the network for people using insecure logins for various things. They post the username and password (redacted, of course) for all to see. Hmm... searching "Wall of Sheep" on flickr led to this picture. What I actually meant was this.

- The wedding at the end of the award ceremony, for the new game, "Marry the Fed." IMHO, they should raise the bar next year by adding an extra rule: require that the two people who get married at the end of the conference must demonstrate that they were not dating at the start of Defcon. Hmm, I sense reality show material here...

- Priceless quotes (accurate? close enough). Sergey Bratus - "I developed a converter to convert Klingon to English so I could read the text of Hamlet like it was in its original Klingon." Jason Scott - "Wikipedia: It's like you built a really nice car, and then let 12-year-olds drive it into a wall repeatedly 24 hours a day."

- The TCP/IP Drinking Game was amusing. I actually knew some of the answers that the intoxicated experts didn't get (so maybe I had a sobriety advantage)...

- Entertaining shirts, various nerd slogans. "Legolas is my house elf." "Bic Pen Tester." (the latter was actually at Black Hat, not Defcon)

- The Black and White Ball. Great for people watching!

- Last, but not least, really good information. My favorites were "Aliens Cloned My Sheep," "CiscoGate," "Social Attacks on Anonymity Networks" (partly because I think Nick Matthewson has a great voice), "The Inherent Insecurity of Widgets and Gadgets" (though the speakers kept cracking jokes that the audience wasn't reacting to, like "If you're a werewolf, like I am, you probably are interested in adding a widget to tell you when the moon is full." No audience reaction.), and "Storing and Serving Malicious Content from Well Known Web Servers." I'm too tired to post recaps right now. Maybe later...

And I'll end this blog by posting a video to enlighten you on the grand beginnings of the Defcon enterprise:

Blondes are not to be trusted

The big news from Defcon 15 is that an NBC Dateline reporter snuck into the conference, pretending to be "just another attendee." Apparently she was planning this big expose, trying to find some 13 year old and make him confess to breaking into the Pentagon computer with his PSP (as the Dark Tangent described it). Nice. Understandably, people were not pleased. So the Defcon organizers established a new game: Spot the Reporter!

Early in the day they showed pictures of this reporter. Eventually they outed her, and she fled from the conference. This article contains a video of what went down. Note that you can see my rental car when there are 26 seconds left in the video.

Honestly, though, I was absolutely ecstatic about this entire event from the start. First thing in the morning, they flashed this picture on the screen of a thin, pretty blonde woman and said, "Don't trust her." As a brunette woman, I was very pleased with the effect. It was as if the organizers decreed, "OK, you thousands of attractive male nerds out there... be suspicious of any pretty blonde woman you see. Blonde women can't be trusted. Go for brunettes instead." Thank you, Defcon organizers, for encouraging a healthy fear of blondes.

Now if only that could just spread a bit wider...

My Defcon 15 Badge

This thing is awesome. The display starts out saying "I <3 DEFCON 15," but you can program the lights to display a <= 16 character scrolling message. Hmm. I want to figure out how to make animated characters.

Let's see... what else is on this thing?

At the bottom, on the back, it says "0100011101001111001000000101011001001111010010010100001101000101" ("GO VOICE" in ASCII).

The coordinates 42.34202 -71.069441 are at the top of the badge. According to Google, that's on Waltham Street, in Boston, MA. The closest address I can find is 44 Waltham Street, which appears to be the address of "Boston Pest"...?

Hmmm... gotta think thru this...

Update (8/4/2007):

After Kingpin's "Making of the Defcon Badge" session yesterday morning, people asked about the geocoordinates and "GO VOICE" in binary. He didn't explain the geocoordinates (said it was a part of hacker history that we should all know), but he did explain "GO VOICE." It's a tribute to the good ol' days of the Internet--after talking to someone on IRC or in your trusty BBS, you'd say "go voice" instead of "call me." Too bad; I was hoping it was something awesome like secret voice activation (visions of Denholm at the end of Yesterday's Jam run thru my mind).

No luck yet with the "hacker historical reference." I've googled names, technologies, locations... nothing. Let me know if any of you out there figure it out.

Update (8/5/2007, really, really early in the morning):

Aww, maaan, it was so obvious! I even thought of it earlier, but apparently didn't google the right things. 42.34202 -71.069441 are the geocoordinates for the old location of "l0pht heavy industries" (which later became @stake, which was even later sucked into Symantec). Kingpin, the badge designer, was in l0pht. They were located at 46 Waltham Street, Boston. I was so close!! Sorry for the delay in getting the info out. I'll do better next time, I promise.

I will add that Google Maps thinks 44 Waltham Street is at that location, not 46 Waltham Street. Bad software. Bad!! No treats for you.

Allez Fuzzing!

Sadly, Black Hat 2007 is now over. My first Black Hat. I learned lots. It inspired me to become even more of a nerd than I currently am. I <3 U, technology. Here's the short version ('cuz I wanna go play with my defcon badge. more on that later):

Black Hat low points:
- The annoying "Hackistan" guy. Seriously. Obnoxious.
- Too much red meat. Three out of four lunches this week were beef. What, did the organizers think all those nerds needed to beef up a bit? Sheesh.

Black Hat high points:
- Iron Chef: Black Hat. It was by far my favorite session. It was the static exploitation tool guys versus the runtime guys. The static guys found way more vulnerabilities, but weren't able to get an exploit tool running in the allotted 45 minutes, so the runtime guys won. Awesome. I hope they bring Iron Chef back next year!
- No-Tech Hacking with Johnny Long.
- Web 2.0 is fundamentally flawed. Amazing that most fancy new sites (gmail, hotmail, and whatever else uses Ajax and authenticates up front then pushes you into an insecure session) are vulnerable--just sniff the URLs visited, pull out one with a sessionid, paste it into your browser, and you're in their account! Doesn't matter if they change their password--you're in anyway! Gmail users--turn on SSL. For other sites... well, let's just hope that talk inspired people to secure their authentication systems!
- Satellite navigation injection attacks. I'd read about this on The Register several months ago, but it was entertaining to see their demos. I love the fact that you can broadcast a message like "bullfight in progress" and have it display in the middle of a freeway or something. Oh, I mean, what a terrible vulnerability. Shocking.

Enough for now. I'll probably think of more later.