It seems that Apple are announcing some sort of “thing” this evening. According to my “Mac Evangelist” (Yes – that’s what he called himself) flatmate, it’s going to fundamentally change computing forever. Or I suppose it could just as easily be an software update. I especially liked the one that enabled copy-and-paste. That really changed everything!
That sounds rather bitter. It’s not that I don’t like Apple. I’m typing this on a Mac Mini, and the iPod Touch is a brilliant piece of kit. I just don’t care! What annoys me is the incessant hype surrounding this thing. Nobody outside of Apple even knows what it is yet!
Someone once joked that Steve Jobs could crap in a white plastic box and the “Evangelists” would queue up to hand over their money. I’m starting to believe that. I guess it shows the strength of Apple’s marketing department though.
I wasn’t all that fond of Avatar. It was without a doubt the most visually impressive thing I’ve ever seen in a cinema, but I wouldn’t want to sit through it again.
Anyway, Jason has evidently been to see it over the last few days. For the most part we have the same opinion of it. However there is one exception. And since Jason hasn’t implemented any sort of commenting feature to his site yet, I’ll have a little rant about it here.
I have various other niggling complaints about the film overall, but we can now come to my biggest one. Unobtainium. Really? Fucking seriously? Unobtainium? Creative genius at work 
Yes. Unobtainium. It’s a joke. Not a very funny one, but a joke nonetheless. I thought it was fairly obvious, but I have had to explain it to a few people since seeing the film. Perhaps I just read too much science-fiction? It doesn’t matter what the company was mining for. It could just have easily been gold or oil without affecting the plot in any major way.
Actually calling the substance “Unobtainium” might not seem very creative, but the film has far bigger problems than that. For example, I got the impression that the big floating mountains contained quite a lot of this Unobtainium stuff. Why not just mine them rather than fighting the big blue aliens?
There’s something about this image that I find really pleasing. Possibly because I’m inside and warm.
From the BBC.
I sat my dreaded forensic science exam was this afternoon, so I’m getting back to some degree of normality now. It wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t just quite what I expected. The questions were really quite general, which didn’t suit me particularly well. Still I think I’ve probably done well enough to pass, and if not, at least I know how to test for drugs and body fluids!
I only have one exam this semester, but I have a fairly sizable report due at the end of next week which I need to get working on. There are a few topics to choose from, but I’m leaning toward a comparison of forensic analysis of Windows vs. Linux systems. I had been hoping to do Windows vs. OS X, as OS X is something I’m not so familiar with, but I’d also been hoping to get the report started before Christmas rather than getting bogged down in forensic science revision, so Windows vs. Linux it is!
Another thing I need to start thinking about is my Masters dissertation (assuming that today’s exam was a success, of course!). I had been thinking about proposing an analysis of one of the current-generation game consoles, most likely the PlayStation 3, but only because that’s the console I’m most familiar with. Instead, I’ve applied for a placement with a company who want to investigate the forensic analysis of the Nintendo Wii. It’ll probably be a few weeks yet before I hear anything more about it, but I’m hoping that goes well because it looks really cool!
Anyway, I was back up north for Christmas and across to Edinburgh for New Year’s Eve. I’d never been to Edinburgh over Hogmanay before, but despite being cold the street party was great craic. I wasn’t too sure about the big blue man on New Year’s Day though. Still, it was probably better to do something vaguely cultural than sit in my friend’s flat and watch an entire day of Mythbusters!
Revision for my upcoming forensic science exam was getting a bit tedious so I went to see Avatar last night.
It’s pretty good. The 3D effects are really impressive, and for the most part, a lot more subtle than I expected them to be. I probably won’t watch it again, but it’s worth seeing just for the spectacle of it all.
Other thoughts as we left the cinema:
- Dances with Wolves in space
- Animals with USB ports
Right, that’s enough time wasted. Notes on “presumptive tests for drugs of abuse” await!
There have been some very odd things going on in computer forensics over the last few weeks.
First, Microsoft’s COFEE incident response tool leaked onto the internet. COFEE had previously only been available to law enforcement organisations, so having it leak to the public kicked up a bit of storm with people trying to work out just exactly what it is capable of doing. The answer turned out to be “not very much”. Rather than being the ultimate secret backdoor that some early media reports made it out to be, COFEE is more like a glorified shell script that pulls down volatile memory to a USB stick.
Inevitably, someone released a tool aiming to disrupt COFEE’s execution. DECAF was released earlier this week, but a couple of things about it seemed a little strange. It’s website offered the tool for download, but in a binary only distribution. Perhaps it’s just me, but I find it quite hard to trust security tools that don’t release their source code. Another quirk was that the DECAF website contained an EULA for the software prohibiting reverse engineering or disassembly (Which also contained references to Skype of all things!). It all seemed to go against the ethos of full disclosure in computer security.
I downloaded a copy, and planned to play with it over this weekend (I’ve just handed in my final piece of MSc coursework for the semester today!), but there’s another twist:
The DECAF website has been updated to remove any links to the software and instead shows an odd message claiming that all copies of DECAF have been disabled, ending with a passage from the Bible!
As I’ve been writing this I’ve been listening to an interview with DECAF’s developer on the Cyberspeak podcast which seems to have been recorded before the tool was taken down. It’s interesting, but it doesn’t really make things any clearer with regard to the developers motivations or the manner in which the tool was released.
Last week I started playing with Last.fm in an attempt to stave off the boredom associated with the statistics labs that were piling-up on my desk.
If you have a strange desire to know what I’ve been listening to recently, here’s a link to my profile.
This is a pretty interesting read.
Back in August there was an article in Wired about people who decide to disappear without leaving any trace at all. As a sort of follow-up the writer decided to “disappear” himself and try to pick up a new identity for a month, with a bounty of $5000 for anyone who could track him down.
The premise is simple: I will try to vanish for a month and start over under a new identity. Wired readers, or whoever else happens upon the chase, will try to find me.
The idea for the contest started with a series of questions, foremost among them: How hard is it to vanish in the digital age? Long fascinated by stories of faked deaths, sudden disappearances, and cat-and-mouse games between investigators and fugitives, I signed on to write a story for Wired about people who’ve tried to end one life and start another. People fret about privacy, but what are the consequences of giving it all up, I wondered. What can investigators glean from all the digital fingerprints we leave behind? You can be anybody you want online, sure, but can you reinvent yourself in real life?
It’s one thing to report on the phenomenon of people disappearing. But to really understand it, I figured that I had to try it myself. So I decided to vanish. I would leave behind my loved ones, my home, and my name. I wasn’t going off the grid, dropping out to live in a cabin. Rather, I would actually try to drop my life and pick up another.
Writer Evan Ratliff Tried to Vanish: Here’s What Happened
Scotland’s Autumn Tests started this weekend against Fiji. Getting tickets was easy but I had to solve a little logic puzzle to actually get into Murrayfield.
Someone at the SRU hadn’t thought their cunning plan all the way through.
Pretty good game. I’m off to the Scotland / Australia game next week.
