Kevin Smith’s low-budget blockbuster, Clerks, is the inspiration for this classic Internet animation, a dead-on sendup of life on the Death Star. See how a couple of slacker stormtroopers kill time on the big, bad battle-station — away (but not too far away) from all of the blasters, lightsabers and garbage compactors.
Too funny. Jeff Allen and his crew capture Smith’s comic timing and sense of dialogue almost perfectly. If this had been B&W live action, it may have been a dream sequence cut away during the DeathStar Contractors discussion which was cut from the theatrical release of Clerks.
The Slammer worm penetrated a private computer network at Ohio’s Davis-Besse nuclear power plant in January and disabled a safety monitoring system for nearly five hours, despite a belief by plant personnel that the network was protected by a firewall, SecurityFocus has learned.
The breach did not post a safety hazard. The troubled plant had been offline since February 2002, when workers discovered a 6 x 5in hole in the plant’s reactor head. Moreover, the monitoring system, called a Safety Parameter Display System, had a redundant analog backup that was unaffected by the worm. But at least one expert says the case illustrates a growing cybersecurity problem in the nuclear power industry, where interconnection between plant and corporate networks is becoming more common, and is permitted by federal safety regulations.
WTF? As a friend of mine said “Yet another reason virus writers should be taken out in the middle of the street at midday and shot through the head.” And, all the more reason for Microsoft to proactively tighten up their codebase rather waiting for The China Syndrome to happen at the hands of a pimply faced kid with a keyboard and broadband connection.
Missile warning sensors, which sit on the fuselage, scan for approaching rockets, looking for the ultraviolet and infrared plume of a missile. Sensors are set to distinguish an aircraft engine from that of a missile, which burns at a much higher temperature.
Once the rocket’s trajectory is logged, a “jam head” fixed to the plane fires a high-intensity laser which confuses the warhead, sending it off course.
This all happens in a split second and the system is fully automatic, so demands no intervention by the pilot.
But will airlines, which are already strapped for cash, splash out the $2-3m per plane it costs to install this sort of equipment?
And, more chilling news from the BBC. In the aftermath of 9/11, I suppose this sort of thing should not be surprising. Welcome to the new arms race. There is no “duck and cover” in jet liner.
There is a function in many versions of Microsoft Office programs, which includes Word, Excel and PowerPoint, that means that fragments of data (which Microsoft refers to as metadata) from other files you deleted or were working on at the same time could be hidden in any document you save.
This could be embarrassing for any home workers whose colleagues find out that they have been applying for jobs while working at home or being less than complimentary about their co-workers.
With the right tools this hidden data can easily be extracted. Unix and Linux users can turn to tools such as Antiword and Catdoc to turn the document, including its formatting information, into a simple text file.
As a rule, I am not one of those Open Source advocates that view Microsoft as the evil empire. However, this report from the BBC is chilling. If this functionality was not willfully and maliciously hidden, then it was/is morally (if not criminally) negligent not to make it public knowledge. When confronted with stories like these, I sometimes wish I were a Luddite. Many thanks to David Bryant for the heads up.
I wrote a few weeks back that I had picked up $30 Film School by Michael W. Dean. I am 3/4 of the way through the book and loving it. It is hands down the best, most accessible book I’ve read on the subject of film-making. Not only does Dean provide everything needed to get started as an independent film-maker, he also provides a great deal of inspiration and kicks in the seat of the pants. I’ll give a deeper review when I finish it later this week, but so far, this is an exceptional book. 
Having already written and directed one short documentary, I was amazed at how similar my own experiences were to Dean’s. It has been a while since that first film for me. And, after reading this book I know what has been missing these last few years. So, I have a few smaller projects to wrap up first but then I finish the screenplay that has been lingering for the last two years. After that, I get it on film (DV).
D.I.Y. or die baby. D.I.Y. or die.
Bloggers take note. Steal These Buttons is a great resource for very small and very effective blog buttons. These clean buttons add consistency to your look and feel. Check it out. If you are feeling creative, use Button Maker, courtesy of the Kalsey Consulting Group.