Disney sitcom says open source is insecure Shake it Up, a Disney sitcom that screens on The Disney Channel around the world, has slipped in an insult to open source software. The show, which tracks the activities of a group of aspiring dancers on a TV show called "Shake it Up, Chicago", appears to be aimed at tweens. We make that assertion based on the age of comments …
Indeed -
U-571 - The Americans didn't pick up an Enigma until 1944. Of 15 captured during the war, 13 were by the British (The first by HMS Bulldog in '41). The Poles captured some as far back as 1928.
Saving Private Ryan would have you believe that D-Day was nearly all an American affair.
I don't have time to list the defects of other classics such as Braveheart or The Patriot.
I don't have time to list the defects of other classics such as Braveheart or The Patriot.
I dunno which of "The Patriot"(s) you mean but Braveheart is mostly Aussie job (although the original writer is an American indeed). Yet I suppose The Patriot (2000) w/ M. Gibson. Its director is a German, although the guy is excused as being the writer and director and executive producer of "The Independence Day" as well.
Fascinating program on History Channel (Cdn) yesterday about Dieppe. Researcher probing more recently released secret docs claims that the real purpose of the raid was to obtain a 4-rotor Enigma coding machine and settings docs for them. Although it all went wrong, it makes the large loss of lives less pointless than it previously seemed. One of the main proponents of the scheme was one Ian Fleming, who was onboard a ship to receive anything recovered and whisk it back to Bletchley Park.
Dieppe also led to the development of Hobart's Funnies, tanks modified for beach landings:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobart%27s_Funnies
http://www.imaco.com.hk/cgi-bin/prod.pl/keyword/Hobart
which were successfully used on the non-USA Normandy beaches - perhaps a "not invented here" attitude.
I'm not entirely sure that they were not as well handled, Omaha in particular was strongly defended, and the Rangers that scaled the cliffs were IMO very brave and determined men. However, my Dad fought alongside Americans in North Africa in 1943 (I think), and he a quite low opinion of their abilities.
None of this compares to the Great Computer Programmer Incapacitation of '93, when thousands of IT professionals were hospitalized by the sheer dumbness of Jurassic Park's "It's a UNIX system. I know this!"
That said, I don't know which is more offensive to me - the silly dig at Open Source or the idea that the computer programmer kid should be wearing a knitted tank top and big glasses.
"None of this compares to the Great Computer Programmer Incapacitation of '93, when thousands of IT professionals were hospitalized by the sheer dumbness of Jurassic Park's "It's a UNIX system. I know this!" "
You say that, but the flight-simulator style file browser was genuine: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fsn
"You say that, but the flight-simulator style file browser was genuine: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fsn"
True. That interface could practically have been written for action movies. But I find the suggestion that any hacker faced with a UNIX system rather than a pre-Windows 95 OS as their target system would be relieved... *amusing*. ;)
I find the suggestion that any hacker faced with a UNIX system rather than a pre-Windows 95 OS as their target system would be relieved... *amusing*. ;)
Since Lex (the character who utters the line in question) isn't trying to "hack" anything, that's rather irrelevant, no?
In the scene in question, she's trying to make legitimate use of the park's control software, through its (ostensible) proper user interface. She doesn't need to defeat any security; Nedry apparently left his X11 session up and unsecured.
Of course, using SGI's silly 3D file browser as some sort of user interface (maybe the park's control software UI is a bunch of perl scripts...) is pretty dumb; but in the context of the scene, her comment makes some sense. Certainly more than the typical gibberish spouted by TV and film characters when conjuring with the Magic Computer. ("It's military-grade encryption. It'll take me a few minutes to break it, which I will do by typing furiously while windows appear and disappear and hex dumps and/or random source code scrolls by. Then I will adjust the Eigenvectors and we'll enhance the traffic-cam image so we can capture the perp's fingerprints.")
No I meant those such as my employer - at the time we instigated a major bit of FLOSS software we were six employees building a telecoms reporting system that ended up being the biggest print job in europe! The interface between the reporting system and Oracle was FLOSSed and today is still going strong.
Our technical director left some time ago and still supports this FLOSS project.
Jacqui
Stewart Lee says it best about Braveheart. The French princess that William Wallace was meant to have been boinking was a real historical figure, but only four years old at the time. So if it did happen, then William Wallace was a paedophile and the event might not quite have been so romantic as it was portrayed in the movie.
There's no re-purposing. "Freetard" has always been about people who want something for nothing, e.g. those pirating music, movies or software. That's where it comes from. Nothing to do with Free (Libre) Software. Free Software is almost the opposite of Freetardism in that Free Software is about actively producing and sharing what you've done to others without asking for anything in return, whereas being a Freetard means taking without giving back.
"Free Software is almost the opposite of Freetardism in that Free Software is about actively producing and sharing what you've done to others without asking for anything in return, whereas being a Freetard means taking without giving back."
You, er, might want to re-read what you wrote there. The irony is strong in this one.
If you're not asking for anything in return, why do you care whether someone gives anything back?
Also, what's so bloody wrong with just releasing your work into the Public Domain? Again: if you really aren't asking for anything in return, what's the problem? The only reason for NOT using doing that is if you DO care what others do with it and still wish to retain control. Which makes you an egotistical hypocrite.
Also, what's so bloody wrong with just releasing your work into the Public Domain?
Well, in the US at least, the public domain is under assault from various sides. If you really want to release work so it's available for free use, I think a liberal license (eg Apache) is likely a safer bet.
When I release my own stuff, I usually do it under a license modeled on BSD or Apache, but with the attribution clauses removed (so you don't have to go through the trouble of attributing it to me). Of course that means someone else could claim it as their own work without violating the license, but I don't think license terms give plagiarists pause anyway.
Finally, it makes sense - the kid should have asked if they had used krakz or warez - stolen software, but the screenwriter confused these terms with 'open source'. This is an ongoing problem with the public image of FOSS. It is hard to convince non-savvy people that open-source software can be better and more secure. From their point of view, if it is 'free' it must be either stolen or crap - you get what you pay for! So many machines I have been asked to fix are malware ridden tragedies, with their obligatory cracked copies of Microsoft Office and Photoshop, not to mention games. I know one individual who does not update his cracked copy of Windows - he just installs a krakz with the latest patches every few months.
Microsoft often side with Big Media ( DRM and pointless restrictions on how files are used), it often feels that Microsoft views Big Media as their client rather than the sap paying for their software. Maybe this is a "I'll scratch your back , if you scratch mine" by Disney... after all a FUD attack is the favoured method by Microsoft for hitting the opposition.
"it often feels that Microsoft views Big Media as their client rather than the sap paying for their software"
Because that's exactly how it is. Big media and other "partners" in their "ecosystem" are the clients. The poor sap doesn't even pay for the software, he pays for the license to use it, and to get shafted every step of the way. The sap is the target, or the mark, or whatever you'd like to call him other than client or customer.
Well, that gets the Monday morning rant taken care of, back to work now
Except most disney shows prominantly display Apple products, sometimes with the badge changed to a pear so I fail to see what this has to do with Microsoft. As pointed out in the article Disney own Pixar and a certain S. Jobs had an awful lot to do with that company. I only know this as I am unlucky enough to have kids that can't seem to watch enough of this drivel.
"ICarly and Victorious are also on Disnety DX. We don''ve have Nickelodeon here, but get those both those shows."
Although they might be, both of those shows are produced by Nickelodeon - across all Nickeldeon shows, they use the Pear logo instead of Apple's.
"...I am unlucky enough to have kids that can't seem to watch enough of this drivel..."
I feel your pain, man. Sat through so many hours with seemingly endless re-runs of Hanna Montanna, iCarly and who-knows-what-other-complete-bollocks running in the background that the ten-second clip linked in this article nearly made me claw out my own eyes...
Put in perspective, pretty much every single line in these shows is a set up for one of the cute characters to say their cute catchphrase (cue laugh track) or make a cute face (Cue "Aww...") or say their cute catchphrase while making their cute face (cue laugh track and applause) so anyone who would actually be influenced by the content will have been asleep long before the FUD hits.
Oh, and by the way, there is hope. My own previously-Disney-addicted teen is making a good recovery, and even has the decency to look embarrassed when Smiley Vyrus is mentioned... ;)
This post has been deleted by its author
" the target audience of this show aren't exactly those people making enterprise software purchasing decisions"
So Disney should have put it in their hit show "Pete's Purchasing Posers" targeted at chief technology officers? ;) FUD should be ubiquitous and pervasive. Exposure of the the embryonic CTOs in their formative years to this message is to the good and a triumph of long term investment of short termism.
"Errrr....you guys are aware that the target audience of this show aren't exactly those people making enterprise software purchasing decisions, right?"
But they are of an age where they might grow out of this pap, get a decent education and then end up making "enterprise software purchasing decisions". Or, if not enterprise level decisions, then at least at the SMB level. Then they regurgitate this nonsense and reach a decision along the lines of "well, no-one ever got fired for buying MS/Apple/ProprietoryStuff (insert your least favourite software here)". And thus the cycle of lock-in continues.
Sorry. I'll get off my little podium now.
Colin
But they are of an age where they might grow out of this pap, get a decent education and then end up making "enterprise software purchasing decisions". Or, if not enterprise level decisions, then at least at the SMB level. Then they regurgitate this nonsense and reach a decision along the lines of "well, no-one ever got fired for buying MS/Apple/ProprietoryStuff (insert your least favourite software here)". And thus the cycle of lock-in continues.
One half-assed remark by a writer who clearly doesn't know their stuff does not an indoctrination make. I grew up watching Star Trek and some seriously weird 80s/90s cartoons, but I don't currently believe that talking cats can fly jet fighters, nor have I tried to solve any server issues by dumping the rack's warp core.
One half-assed remark ... fair enough. But how many of the target audience will have heard that remark and let it sink in? All it takes is one percent of the target audience to believe it and one percent of that subset to end up making the decisions.
And let's not ignore the fact that this program will be repeated ad nauseam and the FUD will continue.
Colin
One half-assed remark ... fair enough. But how many of the target audience will have heard that remark and let it sink in? All it takes is one percent of the target audience to believe it and one percent of that subset to end up making the decisions.
If they get to that point so uneducated that they're still basing computing decisions on an off-cuff remark they heard on the Disney channel in their pre-teen days, the company has far bigger problems.
Given that the content of these live-action kids shows is such utter dross, what are the chances that anyone will remember any of it? It's like enduring a visual frontal lobotomy.
One half-assed remark by a writer who clearly doesn't know their stuff does not an indoctrination make
But can you imagine the shit storm that would have resulted if the pseudo mini-nerd had asked "“Did you use Microsoft Explorer as the default browser to save time, and the virus was hidden in an un-patched security vulnerability with iFrames[1] that allowed you to pick up a drive-by virus?”[2]
[1] Can't believe that crApple have yet to sue mickeysoft for having the cheek to put "i" before anything
[2] CVE-2012-1889 vulnerability.
One half-assed remark by a writer who clearly doesn't know their stuff does not an indoctrination make. I grew up watching Star Trek and some seriously weird 80s/90s cartoons, but I don't currently believe that talking cats can fly jet fighters, nor have I tried to solve any server issues by dumping the rack's warp core...
During CNN's "coverage" of the Columbia disaster, the "crawl" on the bottom of the screen announced that at the moment it broke up in the upper atmosphere, the ill-fated Shuttle was traveling "25 times the speed of light"*. To this day, I wonder if the bonehead Trekkie intern at CNN was ever fired for that blooper.
*the Columbia was, in fact, traveling at approximately Mach 25 -- 25 times the speed of sound.
[Quote]
One half-assed remark by a writer who clearly doesn't know their stuff does not an indoctrination make. I grew up watching Star Trek and some seriously weird 80s/90s cartoons, but I don't currently believe that talking cats can fly jet fighters, nor have I tried to solve any server issues by dumping the rack's warp core.
[/Quote]
In Star Trek they had the PADD. Now we have an iPad (okay, ST first made one in 1996, but it didnt have a green phone icon).
What goes on in popular media does influence the views of everyone. Some studies have shown that all of the gun crime in the USA is not related to gun ownership and crazy people, but it is actually related to the fact that the news goes on about gun crime happening so much that they implant the idea into peoples head that criminals should use guns.
As far as the TV show goes, It was probably written by someone who is needing to churn out a lot of work every day and they likely have limited knowledge of such things. It is likely that the idea was that someone trying to get "free" software was stung, while it is not a big problem to appear in 1 episode of 1 show it would be worrying if it becomes a recurrant theme within any show or a set of shows.
No, but they are the people downloading cracks and warez. If the show is to make any sense, the kids used stolen commercial software, not open-source. The screenwriter got the terms confused. For most computer users, if they hear that a package is free, they assume that it must be either illegal or crap. I have encountered people who simply switched off in disbelief, or became angry when I recommended free open-source solutions.
Will be the ones who are pirating proprietary crap now and probably buying some of it later if the manage to progress their careers beyond salting fries at Mac'ds.
The kid in the knitted vest and thick glasses will end up working as a teenaged Windows support monkey who dreams of making it to a job as a "Microsoft Certified" click-and-drool "server admin" before he is twenty and using his company provided technet sub to setup Windows servers in his bedroom.
I am deeply offended by the authors implied assumption that all freetards like or prefer open souse. As a freetard I only pirate the best closed source software. A freetard would not use open source as that it would not fall within the freetard realm. You know since its already free.
"anyone getting software advice from a Disney kids show is probably going to end up with Windows 8 anyway."
My avid-Disney-viewing niece has been an Ubuntu user for a year after within the space of three months infesting her then new Windows 7 netbook with enough shitware to bring it to its knees. It got to the point where it wouldn't finish booting up. (She did much the same thing to her mother's Vista laptop prior to that.) The cause appeared to be a combination of 'free' (but requiring an install) games she found on the web and the teens actually emailing virus laden payloads to each other for jolly japes.
Ubuntu - rock steady, boring, kid proof, means I never get asked to fix it again :-)
I'm not even sure his comment is the worse thing about this budget-deprived and poorly written... "comedy" (I assume that's what the canned laughter was meant to imply).
I was more offended by the enforcement of stereotypes and I cringed more when the token Asian couple "have the code to fix it"...
I can only hope that the average attention span of the target audience mean that they only noticed the pretty colours and points when they were expected to laugh. Is this clip typical of USA kids TV?
"I cringed more when the token Asian couple "have the code to fix it"..."
I cringed at how cheesy the Asian girl's seifuku was. That said, maybe they have got something to fix it, sure looks like that thing lurking in the background is supposed to be Tokyo Tower...
Best Nerd Ever - "Data" from the Goonies. This kid, I'll concur with the above. A large wooden bat.
Is this clip typical of USA kids TV?
Only of the live-action side. Some of their animated stuff is superb. Their live-action low-budget shows that you find on Disney or Nick? Terrible, awful, atrocious, horrific, and utterly unbearable. To be honest, the clip you just saw is probably some of the better stuff. For example, try tracking down this episode on YouTube and giving it a watch:
Wizards of Waverly Place: Dancing with Angels. - Be very afraid!
Can I just say that this braindead cultural obsession with "angels" (but of course. never "devils") as you just touched on there, in films and on TV, and let's not be gentle here, in fucking dreadful cheesy "Talent"-show type songs and singers, from which I don't fully exclude the entire career of Robbie Williams, is starting to severely brass me off.
It kind of falls under the "Noble Lie" "Wittgenstein's ladder" category but unfortunately really tends to screw up childrens' and then subsequently, some adults' concept of the reality of the physical world around them.
I mean for example here was me telling my daughter that angels were just some kind cherry-picked nice crazy talk from an old book, and that actually in the old book, they can also be seriously nasty and kill people, unlike in the songs and TV, and that actually no-one wants to mention that or talk about "devils" either, when I find out later that some kind soul has been telling her "an Angel" sits on her bed at night when she sleeps!
Gee, thanks, New-Agers!
Thank f*ck no-one decided to tell her she had a "Spirit Guide" yet, and I guess I can't show her certain Dr Who episodes ;)
Wizards of Waverly Place: Dancing with Angels
From the Disney website: "Will you be tuning in for the new episode?
I will like f**k
This is what is wrong with the youf of today, sitting around living off the fat of the land, watching this nanny state rubbish has rotted the branes of the council estate idiots, somebody should ban this immoral tv, its politica lcorrectness gone mad, bring back real television like "Magpie" and "Play Away", a few hours oggling Jenny Hanley's chesticles with extra bumps and listening to Brian Cant's puns will sort out the yoth of today.
Mr angry
United Kingdom
As an example, Microsoft and Apple "software"[1] has always been "free"[2] to anyone willing to rip off a corporation trying to make a dollar selling "software" to rubes.
Open source is just that ... open source. You can see the source, and do with it what you will. The concept of money changing hands doesn't necessarily exist when an individual makes use of the ones & zeros that tell the hardware how to make the end-user happy in open source.
In a nutc-shell, "free" in this context is meaningless.
[1] "Software" doesn't actually exist ... "software" is merely the current state of the hardware.
[2] Note I'm talking personal use ... Microsoft and Apple might not want to admit it, and have spent hundreds of millions of futile dollars trying to revoke this concept ... but it's reality, nonetheless.
You'ŗe not a corpse, you are in fact a lump of meat with an advanced system of biochemical preservatives that stop you going "off". Which is why you don't smell too bad and don't have any episodes of rigor mortis.
I hope I reassured your worldview there, Sir! ;)
And for all the kids out there - your heart is a muscle, love is a self-interested survival delusion based on hormones, the sky is full of aeroplanes, geese and rockets, plus the occasional falling rock, the previous place people thought the gods lived is full of algae blooms and mercury-laden mutant pike.
Barbie is an alien out of proportion nightmare with odd taste in boyfriends, Disney Princesses look like they might be from Vienna or Monaco, but clearly not NYC, Beverley Hills, Chicago, or Oakland .....
And the Celts can be traced back as far as Switzerland, happy St Patrick's Day, y'all, break out the cuckoo clocks!
Not really. How many people using open source software actually know how to read the code to see what it does? I certainly don't, I am not a programmer and have never wanted to be one. Being able to look at the code does not mean that the person using it knows all about it so yes a virus could be hidden in plain sight.
When many "must have" apps will willingly execute any random script or executable they are given, you don't really need to put trojans in the code. While it is certainly possible, it is entirely uncessary.
If the code is open, all you need is one kid who wants to make a name for himself.
If the code is closed, you just have to depend on the good intentions of the likes of Apple or Microsoft.
Let's not forget that the girl knew "the virus was hidden in it" and installed it anyway. To top it all off, even having the code to fix it she needs the help of this abradant argyle clad toady child with a correctable visual impairment?
Now then, what's up with the reversed logo in the lower right of that picture or was this filmed from inside the TV?
Messed keyboard because there isn't a "vomit" or "kill me now" icon.
whose name I have mercifully forgotten where two techs are conversing over hacking into some companies network?
Ist techie: Did they receive the anonymous e-mail?
2nd techie: Yes. Now there network is wide open.
You can't make this sh1te up. Oh wait, you can.
It "may" be unwise to assume that people who spell or punctuate English badly, or have bad English grammar, are in fact more dumb than you. I'm sure people from small countries who have a unique language sometimes make this mistake also about "foreigners" who can't speak or write their "special language" - you know, the rest of the world- Baka Gaijin, Gringos, call them what you will ;) Regardless of the fact that any schoolkid will always learn their own native language.
Yeah, I know that in terms of probabilities, all else being equal with people from the same country as yourself , this may tend to be true, but El Reg readers aren't generally dumb Sun readers... although some might just be doing that to wind you or others up.
I've also known people that had dreadful social skills, terrible language (at least written language), and were gauche to the point of being hilariously offensive accidentally, but were also clearly very far indeed from being stupid.
It's also hypothetically possibly they may be hyper-intelligent beings from another galaxy that have the intergalactic equivalent of the "Hungarian Phrase Book" and have a thirst for fresh pureed brains? ;)
Well, RISC did change everything, in 1994 or so ;)
I mean PA-RISC, bless it's semi-retired soul. I had a manager once tell me that my CV had a fake part in it because HP clearly never made an HP9000, and that I must have made that up, yes, he was actually an IT manager, possibly ex-forces, he liked zip-tying everything, maybe Navy then ;)
Does ARM count I wonder?
"I'll create a GUI interface with Visual Basic, see if I can track an IP address"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygB0ZviqXac
Oh dear.
Like the fat bugger they put in Austin Powers? I blame the actor Robert Carlisle myself ever since he did his extreme role in Cracker, well, that and Robbie Coltrane and Hugh Laurie in a kind of a way (OK, not Scottish per se, but that accent!) but we got our own back with the lovely and very much Scottish Lindsay Duncan as the rather less pleasant Mrs T ;)
This is the company that was nicknamed by it's "own" employees as "Mauschwitz" or, more hilariously "Duckau".
(Ok, not so funny to some, understandably)
I'd say they are a large corporate entity that will do anything to survive, including bolstering prevailing political ideas and memes ;) Plus, they make billions out of selling animation merchandise based on the art in English childrens' books.
Hang on, it wasn't actually them, this time? ;)
seems pretty obvious that some large commercial company dumped some cash in the right bank account to make that happen to try and get in to the minds of the youth. Doesnt matter though, it wont work. Real geeks dont learn their skillz from shows like that, and the wanna bes that do wont end up being technology go to people, private or comercial.
Never ascribe malice where incompetence or lack of time will suffice. There is more than enough ignorance in the world to explain why a script writer does not understand a thing about programming. The author of the article does not even know the difference between a freetard and a penguinista, and he writes for a tech journal, not childrens' television.
No! Open source is completely immune to blackhat code submissions! That has never happened!
Every line in every patch in every open source project is closely checked by an expert team of code reviewers before entering the walled garden of the code repository.
Kill the heretic!
Interesting link, I wasn't aware of that. The article does state that the malicious code was placed through an FTP server hack rather than being missed by code review. In that sense, the fact that it was found is a testament to open source software.
Had that happened on closed source software, it likely would not be noticed until the specific code branch needed work to fix a bug or add a feature.
I think you guys are seeing waaay too much in this. Worse; you're looking at it from the wrong angle too IMO.
We all know what "open source" means, right (to be honest I'm starting to have some doubts)?
And hopefully we also know that there are plenty of people out there who "program" by merely grabbing bits and pieces of existing code and string these together. Of course in the end claiming that they wrote the entire program (always amazing; one program and a dozen different coding styles). I've seen this happening just way too many times myself. Doesn't matter if this concerns Java or Max (multimedia programming language) or C#...
SO quite frankly, all I see here is the 'nerd kid' berating the other kid for /using/ open source code which apparently had some virus sitting in it. In my opinion he only "attacked" the other kid for doing something utterly stupid such as using source code without even understanding what it does. Thus overlooking that it actually contained a virus.
Its not something totally impossible, its based on stuff which happens all the time (see above wrt people 'using' pre-made code), and of course you'd need open source to get access to the actual source code.
Sorry, but I don't see this as an attack on open source code in any way.
Grabbing bits and pieces of existing code is fine (as long as you have the right to do so), why reinvent the wheel?
It's picking the right code and using it to maximum effect that is important; although I would agree that a few developers take this approach to the extreme and use just about anything they can find even if the code isn't fit for purpose.
"it's just fiction" is all good and well but it does rather miss the point itself. Fiction is a very large part of our culture. An incredibly large part of it. As such fiction forms a large part of our worldview by influencing both our value structures and how we perceive the world.
A culture is the social mores, beliefs and opinions and behaviours of a group, who learned those social artefacts while they were children.
This is a show aimed at children. Remember that for a moment.
Consider: if you want to influence a culture, where's the best place to start? At the top, with its leaders? They're already inculcated with a particular worldview. They can be nudged but, by and large, they've settled on their opinions and are unlikely to be shifted, and any change in the underlying culture often threatens their powerbase.
In the middle with the general adult population? Again, they've already absorbed their culture. Again, they are unlikely to be shifted from it because it would require reanalysis of their core beliefs. One or two may have an "epiphany" and change their behaviour when presented with an alternative culture but even they are still innately linked to the prevailing culture in which they were raised. It's burrowed deep into their brain and forms the primary motivations for their behaviour.
The children? They are young and malleable. They are still absorbing the cultural mores of their parents. They are equally open to any concept presented to them.
There's a reason why political movements always focus on children. They know that children, above all others, are easy to impress upon with new ideas, new claims, motivations completely alien to the culture they were born in. The quickest way to create a sea-change in a culture is to capture the next generation and introduce the ideas of that change within them.
Which brings us back to fiction (which forms, as I asserted, the majority of our culture). A child watching this will soak up the idea unconsciously and it will become part of his belief structure in some way. One instance won't do much, but if there are more instances, more pieces of fiction (especially television which, for a variety of physiological reasons, is an extremely potent way to influence the way people think) containing similar ideas, a cultural imperative will be crafted within the child to view open source with suspicion.
So "it's just fiction" is a bit of a red herring. It's presented as fact.
Disney does know this. They made an episode of The Proud Family dedicated to telling children that if you download music illegally you ruin artists, collapse the economy and will end up with a SWAT team smashing your door down and arresting you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eP_i2ZBqYo <-- Here's the proof, if you can stand to watch the horror that is Disney's idea of children's programming.
Well, theoretically, they're right, but I don't suppose they have the manpower to do everyone ;)
Or doesi t work kinda like Santa and his Reindeer on Xmas eve? I eventually gave that idea up when I started to realise just how fast the buggers would have to fly ;)
You make a valid point IMO, except for one thing...
If the show would have changed the approach from "source code with a virus" to "windows executable with a virus" then I'm pretty sure no one would have considered it a problem anymore. Even though the situation would basically have been completely the same: "$kid downloading and using stuff she doesn't understand thus getting her laptop infected with a virus".
But because she picked up an open source program in order to use (parts?) of its source code it suddenly became a problem.
I honestly don't understand the commotion. Because its a given fact that if you visit certain technical fora (for example Slashdot; "news for nerds...") a lot of people will favour open source software over closed source. So how strange is it that a TV producer picked this up, and chose an "open source approach" within the context of a nerdy character?
Hmmm!! 6 down-votes (as of 21st August). I am guessing that some of you guys really do have a problem differentiating between reality and fiction. You're not all American are you by any chance?
Dumbo and Robin Hood must have been a real disappointment for you what with all those hidden political agendas contained therein.
The article says:
"In a company the size of Disney it is understandable that the left hand sometimes scarcely knows the other even exists ..."
But we all know what Disney's other hand was doing :-)
Anyway, when I posted my little rant in response to Greg Preece's comment, I thought I'd gone a bit too far. Further down the page, however, there seem to have been several other posters who made the same point. I'm glad to be on the right side (for once).
Colin
on an episode of 'Bones' this guy in prison,
he had no computer,
and i forget exactly how of the top of my head, but manually manipulated a picture,
and when the shows computer scanned the image, the image had been hand crafted
so there was code embeded into it, (by hand in prison remember)
and that was the virus that took out the whole gov system,
changing peoples data, records, and was practically sentient
it was so overly bollox it was farcical. i dont mind SF/Fiction but sometimes there is a point when you should say, this is just to far.
but the point is, i know Fiction is just that, but some things are wrapped up as 'plausable' and there should be some kind of check in place for this, because one mans fiction, is another idiots source of truth, and before you know it these pieces of 'fiction' have warped another generation.(disney here in point), Disney in our house *(junior currently) is actually quite educatyional, and i generally trust the content they shovel at my kids (mostly)
in short, even fiction should have a reality check, and if you cant be bothered, dont create it. and disney, wll, come on, you are like the BBC of kids stuff, you have a responsibility to be not crap....
I've seen similar stunts pulled in an anime, Battle Programmer Shirase. Except they knew it was utterly ridiculous, and played all their hacking as comedy.
My personal favorate is from Sliders, because it shows the writers actually admit that they know how silly this is. In the episode, a political scandal is broken by taking an image from a TV broadcast. The hacker character then does the 'enhance' thing by zooming in on a wine glass and attempting to process the hidden reflection into a view of the room behind the camera. So far, so standard. But then another character points out that they 'are limited by the resolution of the image.' Our hacker responds: "Only if it's a bitmap. If it's a JPEG, we're only limited by how lossy the compression is." A few seconds later up pops the behind-camera image, crystal clear. Even the writers felt they need to offer some excuse as to how that would be possible. A poor excuse, but an excuse.
That reminds me of a hilarious and pretty clever and nice guy once asking me if I could literally reverse-engineer his Govt Grants+Company Income minus Expenditure -> Operating Balance spreadsheet so that it did the opposite, with monthly inputs as far as I remember.
It was quite a complex spreadsheet with a lot of macros. I gave it a good deal of thought and then politely refused! I still feel bad about that ;)
He used to use his dictaphone on the loo, and then submit it to his secretaries for typing, they could hear the "splashes" ;)
People have been known to use QR codes (e.g. pasted over the real QR code in an advert) in attempts to direct unsuspecting muppets to a website of their choice, which may serve up malware etc. It's unlikely to be done manually and there's an enormous difference between encoding a web address and writing a whole program which magically executes itself. However, I think we can allow a little bit of imagination/fantasy to creep into a work of fiction.
Disney is certainly not above using it's childrens' programs for political or social campaigning - there is a somewhat infamous episode of The Proud Family which starts with a character being lured into a pirate music site called 'E Z Jackster' (this was back during the Napster days) by a shady dealer and ends with a SWAT team smashing the house door down to arrest her for copyright infringement.
However, in this case, any attempt at attacking open source was so ineptly done that I can only conclude it was unintentional. Lazy writer with no idea what he was talking about. It's also a mixed message, because aside from the Pixar release the begining of Tron Legacy contains some elements of open-source idealism, with our noble protagonist breaking into a transparent Microsoft substitute to steal the code to their latest OS and release it free onto the internet (With the required action movie breaking-and-entering and absailing off a building involved).
I was stuck on Tenerife where the terrestrial TV's only English channel was Disney Spain which had English audio tracks for most shows.
All these teen Disney shows are insipid drivel, set in high schools with obligatory stereotypes - nerds, jocks, sassy girl, insecure friend, bitches who get their comeuppance, a token minority who exists only for insipid subplots involving racism, annoying street smart younger brother. Episodes cycled through the same stories - running for class president, school dance, hurting someone's feelings etc. It was basically the same damned show over and over with canned laughter and everyone learning an important lesson which seemed to be forgotten the next episode.
Needless to say these shows were HILARIOUS and I didn't wish death upon everyone involved with making them.
Someone paid them to slip this line into the show.
As earlier posts have suggested, cock-up is a more likely explanation than conspiracy. Can you imagine a marketing meeting to approve this payment?
- "We've got this killer plan: we'll pay Disney to portray a 9-year-old denigrating open source software."
- "Wow! How much do we have to pay?"
- "50,000 bucks."
- "When will it go out?"
- "It's a pre-teen sitcom that's usually on in the afternoon."
- "Fantastic! get the purchase order on my desk today. Next step, IPO, after that, world domination."
IBM had a commercial (in the Dutch market) with a kid as annoying as this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLMglsX3bGA with the 'kicker' at the end that you may need to plug in the computer before you can use it. Annoying in itself as a commercial, but even more annoying was the years after that when people would give "helpful IT advice" when you're debugging a deep problem: "are you sure it's plugged in? I heard computers have serious problems when they aren't plugged in".
That's just awesome, and of course the extra bit of fun where you can't quite be totally sure if they are being a little naive on this one, or deliberately testing you for the LULZ. ;)
Personally if I'm trolling people in that way, I put on more of an accent, preferably a rural one ;)
.... is that these shows are the down fall of civilisation, and should all be banned, they must drop the colective IQ of kids by at least 20-30 points, and show that as long as you self obsessed you can do what ever you want.
Everyone involved in making this type of program should kill themselves.
It appears that many (by no means all) FOSS users see something like this and shout "conspiracy! they're trying to pollute the minds of our children! Stop them!"
The rest of the FOSS users, sit there quietly saying "for pities sake, shut up, or they'll think I'm like you."
I fall into the second category... It was a joke, not a brilliant one, but a joke nontheless and one aimed at children to boot. It's not a brainwashing attempt.
Didn't they use an Atari Portfolio in one of those films? It had a proper keyboard, could use various plugin gadgets, and had built-in DTMF tones so you could dial your contacts directly from any phone as long as you could get the handset to its little speaker so it could do its beeps down the line......
...surely the *real* topic for debate here should be why the video has been flipped horizontally. Is this some cunning (or not so cunning) attempt to avoid the clip being automatically flagged as copyrighted by image analysis tools?
Anyway, as a parent of two young kids, I too have been exposed to waaay too much of this pre-school brainwashing than is healthy. If you think the occasional throwaway line like this is bad, you just wait for the next Earth Day and see how much greenwashed propaganda gets flung in the faces of the little 'uns.
From that video I learnt a number of things;
* Argyle and GIANT glasses REALLY?! I;m surprised he wasn't English too...
* Disney seem to like there buzz words, they probably heard Open Source and virus on Mythbusters...
* Disney still think all teenage asian girls are "ditzy"
* Twee phrases are not bandied about by 8yr olds and early teens.
* Disney need to research a BIT harder next time...
The Macbook Pro with the stick on logo masquerading as a PC is another bit of "Windows" dressing that's offensive to Mac and PC users at the same time. So it pretty much manages to offend everyone.
The only reason my Macbook Pro is not dual booting Linux is because the Linux support of the Apple track-pad is/was so bad. "If this has changed and someone can verify it, please do, I'd like to go back to dual booting"
... and I claim my £10.
He's not bold/fat enough to be Uncle Fester Jnr.
My (nearly) 3 year old has loved this show since he was a little older than 2; he seems to get most of the jokes and such.
I am passing this info along to help frame the maturity and intellectual level of the intended audience of this show. I'm sure that the vast majority of viewers have not now an opinion (or knowledge) of open vs closed source, nor will they have for a significant (perhaps infinite) time. I'm sure my son will have forgotten anything that may have been said about programming in this pop-dance color fest of a show.
Just about ANY movie/TV show has them.
Most of the CSI Series (there are others as well) have errors in them. The problem is that they have only 45 minutes (if you take out the commercials) to tell the story on a TV show. This causes them to take SEVERE shortcuts just to move the story along.
We all get used to it, it happens all the time. Deal with it (*SIGH*)
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