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Security is an Illusion

This is actually version 2 of Month 09 journal (more accurately, version 1.0, since the other one never made it out of beta;). Version 0.x was about how it’s hard not to become an activist while my research into hackers unveils some truly hard-to-accept truths.

This might end up being a series. Also, everything I write about in this post can easily be found by doing some quick Googling. And, since nothing’s really moving forward in the production of ALGORITHM (Hollywood is about hurrying to wait, even for writer/directors), this is actually ALGORITHM Journal – Month 09

A few years ago Lois von Ahn (a really smart guy) came up with something called CAPTCHA. The problem he faced was how to know the person attempting to access a website was, in fact, a person, and not a computer programed to emulate human activities.

The stakes are huge.

The ability to know the difference between a human and a computer is relatively easy for a human to master, today. In fact, there’s a whole theory about it called The Turing Test. But, teaching a computer to know the difference is very hard. Here’s why that’s important:

Let’s say you visit PayPal. You want to login to your account and change your bank account to another one. A computer can sit and hammer away at the limited variations of available passwords and eventually get through (there are precautions against this technique as well, but that’s a different topic).

A quick solution is to come up with something that people can generally do very easily, but computers can’t do at all. The solution is CAPTCHA. CAPTCHA is a simple collection of 5 to 10 characters. But, they’re blurred, or corrupted in some way, making it nearly impossible for OCRs (Object Character Recognition: a program that can see words in a photo and recognize the letters as letters) to convert to text.

And, that worked. Spectacularly. So well, in fact, that I’d be surprised if you haven’t encountered it already. So well, that Google bought reCAPTCHA (von Ahn’s company) for a lot of money. So well that von Ahn has gone on to much prestige!

And then the hackers found a loophole.

You know all those porn sites that your coworker visits? Have you seen how sometimes she has to solve a CAPTCHA to get access to the site? The porn site doesn’t actually care about the problem CAPTCHA’s trying to solve. Instead, they’ve hired your coworker to solve the CAPTCHA problem for them and they’re paying her in porn.

The hackers, rather than trying to teach a computer to solve CAPTCHAs have simply found a way to capture the image, post it on their site, and your coworker fills it in. They take the solved CAPTCHA and post it in the site that was originally asking for it.

And, that’s how hackers think.

Scientific Accuracy in Movies

There was a recent Popular Science article about the scientific accuracy in movies, or… more accurately, the scientific inaccuracies in movies. They highlighted seven movies from 2012 that were the biggest violators. I’m going to discuss about one of them: PROMETHEUS, in order to make a point.

For me, the issue is really a question of values. My friend and producer Miles Maker makes the argument that science isn’t as important in movies as good characters and strong story. And, from the perspective of a producer, namely, reeling people in and keeping them gripped by the story for the 2+ hours of a movie, he’s right.

But, what does that really say about the larger values of our society, and specifically, the filmmaking culture in general? Why is it that we’ll spend months and months arguing the value of 2k over 4k or 5k resolution. Or 24 vs 48 vs 120 frames per second. How much impact do those things have on the viewer’s experience. According to Vincent Laforet, quite a bit. But, he’s talking about the semi-dream state (read: mild hypnosis) people enter when watching a movie at 24fps.

My point isn’t to geek out on camera gear, and I do that as much as the next cinephile. The point I’m getting at is one of willful ignorance and the very real possibility that we’re worrying about the wrong things.

Now, to PROMETHEUS.

I’ll grant the article writer that when the research team took off their helmets on a foreign planet, they did risk quite a bit. However, it’s also possible that Ridley Scott thought they might have sufficiently advanced sensing technologies that make such a risk negligible. Or, he was trying to subltey give us the impression that these people are a tad reckless.

From what I’ve seen, Ridley Scott pays very close attention to detail. In fact, that’s why he’s one of my favorite directors and it’s what sets him apart from almost every other director. So, when I see what I believe to be an error he’s made, I assume it’s on purpose and then ask myself why.

Back to PROMETHEUS.

The second issue the article brings up is when the android David (played by Michael Fassbender), tells the time wrong (using 36 hours instead of 1 day and 12 hours) I assume Scott did that for a reason. It got me thinking, “They’re not on Earth. Perhaps David was using local standards for telling time. It’s possible the planet they were on had a 37+ hour day.” Then David wouldn’t have been making a mistake, but giving us two data points at the same time.

I’m going to talk about something that appears to be a bit of a digression, but bear with me because I think it speaks to the larger point.

Then I got thinking, “How is it we tell time? For inches and pounds, we’ve got these physical objects that we use as standards that are kept at the Office of Weights and Measures.”

But, time doesn’t work that way. There is no physical object we can use as a standard. Or is there? How is it we tell time? In the case of an hour, it is 1/24 of a day, which is measured by the rotation of the Earth.

So, if the rotation of the planet we’re on (in our case, the Earth) is used for the standard of time, then if David were to use local time, it would still be using a 24hr time standard, because 24hrs is how many hours that are in a given day, regardless of the planet you’re on.

But, that means that minutes and seconds would change as well, which would make a lot of the time-based scientific testing, the reason they went to the planet in the first place, very difficult. So, getting back to a standard, using Earth as a standard, makes viable.

Now, when Ridley Scott has David use the 37+ hour day, we’re getting at least four data points (duration of the trip/we’re on a planet that isn’t Earth/David is scientifically accurate/in the future we should use Earth standards for the measurement of time). Now, it’s not a mistake, but very well thought-out.

All of that said, there are some scientific elements that were sacrificed to make PROMETHEUS a better story. And, even I’ll admit PROMETHEUS isn’t my favorite Ridley Scott movie– that’s BLADE RUNNER by a long, long distance.

Okay. My seeming digression is over.

One of the main selling points of my forthcoming movie THE ROOT KIT is it’s technical accuracy. The reason for that is because I want the awesomeness of computers to be clear and compelling. I want to make more geeks. I want the world to be literate, and I think that by valuing relatively trivial things like frame-rates instead of content, we’re doing a huge disservice to our audiences. We owe them a good story, with good picture, good sound and good science. If we’re willing to lower the bar in movies, we shouldn’t be surprised when the bar is lowered elsewhere (schools, governments, the courts, etc).

I am not willing to do that. And to compensate for my ignorance as a computer programmer/hacker, I have several very gifted programmers/hackers who are helping me. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, THE ROOT KIT is going to be as technically accurate as I can make it.

A New Economy

I’ve blogged about this before, but since I wasn’t able to come up with an adequate solution, I’m still working on it. As our society progresses technologically, inevitably there will be people who are unable to keep up. What place will those people have in such a society?

I think the question is somewhat erroneous because it implies the continuation of our current social structures, namely, capitalism and class. It also implies that our assumptions for what is true continues as well. For instance, do we need use money to motivate ourselves to work?

These questions come out of a line of thinking put forth (to me at least) by Ross Pruden. He argues that the entertainment industries have to change from an economy of scarcity to an economy of abundance. I have to admit that my first response to Pruden’s argument was resistance. But, the more I think about it, the more I think he’s right, at least that such an economy is on its way. I’m not sure if I agree with his solutions, but that’s a different conversation for a different time.

If everything we want is freely available and in abundance, what, then, do we value? The idea of bundling abundance with scarcity has been suggested. For instance, Kevin Smith went on a tour with his movie RED STATE. So, when someone purchased a ticket to the show, they were really paying to see Kevin Smith rant/talk about whatever he’s into at the moment. His movie can be copied infinitely, and is therefore abundant. However, hearing him speak in person is a one-time event.

I’ll grant that it is possible to continue in a capitalistic mindset with the economy of abundance by pairing it with scarcity, but it begs two questions: 1) Will what is currently a scarcity continue to be scarce? 2) Is capitalism necessary in such a world?

I would argue the answer to both questions is a resounding no. First, nearly everything that used to be scarce is now abundant so to assume what we now have as scarce will continue to be scarce seems rather foolish. Second, it may be possible for people to be motivated by means other than greed or self-preservation. What might such a motivation look like? The answer to (or exploration of) that may end up being another post (or a movie).

 

Above image courtesy of: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:DetroitSkyline.jpg

How Social Media Sells Part 2

UPDATE (05-22-12): The book is really good and well worth the read, if you’re into sci-fi.

 

I write, direct, and edit my own movies/commercials/shorts/music videos/etc. If I like the project, or if the pay is right, I’ll do it for others as well. But, do it well means I have to watch A LOT of movies, to study how the masters do it and also to know what kinds of things people are into now.

It also means I read a ton of screenplays and books, not to mention news articles, blog posts, and Twitter. Story is vital; if a movie doesn’t have a coherent story, very few people are going to like it. And, whatever lofty goals I might have as a visual artist, the art must also appeal to the audience. As such, I’m always on the lookout for a good story to study. My preferred method of consumption is books (ebooks via the Kindle).

So, when my Twitter friend Ross Pruden mentioned he was reading “The Mote in God’s Eye”, I added it to my reading list. It’s about six months later and I’ve bought it and am now reading it.