Blayne Sucks

Last week Bruce Schneier commented on a story about a prison that let an inmate convicted of credit card fraud reprogram a prison computer. Schneier believes this sort of thing should be an “obvious” no-no, and I agree. However, it isn’t obvious to a lot of intelligent and well-intentioned people. In fact there’s consistently been debate on whether or not criminals should be hired for computer security positions. There are people who fervently believe the myth that being an excellent criminal carries over into being an excellent law enforcement officer or security adviser.

Unfortunately, pop culture continues to prop this myth up with TV shows like the USA Network’s upcoming White Collar. The show is about an FBI agent who teams up with his nemesis-turned-good-guy to solve crimes that no one else could solve. Another TV series, called Dexter, which appears on Showtime, portrays a forensics expert who secretly murders the criminals he finds through his work. Both of these shows operate on the premise that experience committing crimes is useful in preventing them.

In reality, committing crimes and preventing crime are fundamentally different activities not because of the skill sets but because of the motivation and interests involved. In fact, the skill sets may be strikingly similar in a lot of ways. Some pirates are excellent sailors, some outlaws can shoot extremely well, and some hackers know a lot about computers. Don’t focus on asking whether the skill sets overlap. Instead, focus on questions like these: Are they dependable? Can they work well with other people in your particular work environment? How do you know they are actually interested in helping your organization? How do you know they are truly reformed?

After focusing on these questions, the truth comes to light: it is very rare that an excellent criminal history translates to an excellent crime-prevention future. There is a reason that police departments do a criminal background check before hiring someone. There is a reason that day care providers don’t hire convicted child molesters. There is a reason that banks don’t hire convicted felons to do security. Why wouldn’t the same rationale carry over to information or computer-based crimes?

Now, there are instances of convicts making amends and turning their lives around. Frank Abagnale is perhaps the most famous of these reformed con men. Hollywood capitalized on his story with the highly successful movie Catch Me If You Can. I know several people who have heard him speak at security conferences, and they have told me that he continues to apologize for his life of crime at the beginning of his talks, decades after they occurred. In fact, he may be a good model of how to lead a life of contrite contribution to law enforcement after being an extremely skilled criminal. He worked long and hard to earn the trust of banks and the FBI. He was initially paid only for positive results, and used the money he earned as a security consultant to pay back his debts.

Still, as a general rule, it should be obvious that hiring anyone convicted of computer fraud to do computer security work is a bad idea. Why take the risk? There are a lot of extraordinarily talented computer security experts who do not have the baggage of a criminal record. If you find, after searching for a non-felon, that you need the particular skills or expertise of a convicted computer fraudster, then don’t put them in a position of power. Don’t trust them without oversight. Don’t get caught up in the Hollywood story. The Frank Abagnales of the world are exceedingly rare; hiring a felon to do computer security almost never ends well.

I have seen the new Star Trek movie twice, once on opening weekend and once, in IMAX, the following weekend. In short, I thought it was fantastic, and I would encourage everyone to see it. In this post, I will provide a rambling postmortem / braindump on what I thought worked, what I thought didn’t work, and a bit of the big picture. If you are interested in a more traditional review, you can find some aggregated reviews here, and I think this one most accurately reflects my feelings. Before I go any further though, I want to start with this short disclaimer:

This post contains spoilers. Do not read further if you have not seen the new Star Trek movie and you are planning on doing so (though at this point I have to ask: why are you waiting?).

Read the rest of this entry »

Last weekend I was able to see a documentary called Helvetica. Although most people I’ve recommended it to this past week have been less than enthusiastic in their feelings towards watching a documentary of a typeface, I strongly urge anyone reading this to give it a fair shot. It is a short documentary on something that virtually everyone takes for granted. I guarantee it will give you a new outlook on text.

To back up a couple of steps, I wanted to talk about Times New Roman, which I have have always disliked. I think I pretty much hate all serif based typefaces. (Serif typefaces have ‘feet,’ called serifs, on letters like capital A’s while sans-serif typefaces have none.) Times New Roman was the default font on many word processing programs when I was in high school. As a result, it was the “required” font for many projects and papers that I had to write. In fact, Times or Times New Roman are still frustratingly required for most academic publications. My favorite font to use in high school was Arial. I even reconfigured the default typeface on any word processing program I could get my hands on to Arial. I was never entirely sure why I liked it, but it seemed to get out of my way. I just felt less formal and made me more relaxed when I was writing something.

How does this related to the documentary? Apparently, many type designers feel that Arial is a rip-off of Helvetica! That’s right folks. There was even speculation that Arial would make an appearance in the film as a villain, but I won’t spoil the surprise for you. Microsoft didn’t want to pay the royalties for Helvetica so they made their own “humanist” typeface. (A humanist font is essentially one that is closer to how a human would write the letter than one that appears machined.) Does that not sound like classic Microsoft to anyone else?

More broadly, anyone who loves design or is otherwise detail-oriented would love this documentary. There was a great quote from Paula Scher in the documentary that holds a subtle truth which applies very broadly.

When you come into design at the point that you start out in history, without knowing that you’re starting out in history, very often you don’t have a sense of what came before you, how it got there, and you certainly don’t know what’s going to come after.

What modern technology company has the best reputation with design? Apple. Why? Most people say this is entirely due to Steve Jobs. How did Steve Jobs become enamored with design? Calligraphy. Calligraphy is as old as writing itself. He began to really appreciate at an early age the historic impact of design and communication. Every aspect of your product speaks to the user. This has been critical to their success.

Anyhow, I hope you’ll consider watching Helvetica. They have a blog on their website which is also rather interesting. You might also like Typographica’s Favorites of 2007.

I don’t really have the opportunity to watch as many movies as I once did, but I recently saw The Fountain by Darren Aronofsky whom you might remember from Pi or Requiem for a Dream. At 96 minutes long The Fountain is an incredibly descriptive movie that says quite a bit more than movies nearing twice that length of time. It was billed as a movie about living forever, and if you aren’t in the mood for a thinking movie, then you should probably pass because this one will seem entirely pointless. However, if you are in the mood to watch a movie that might force you to reflect on what it means to live, then you definitely will enjoy this.

Most of our lives consist of a frenetic discord of which we may not even be fully aware, but if you are able to find stillness in the noise you can see the underlying harmony to be found simply in living. Sometimes, I think the Biblical message about the rich man trying to enter heaven is overly specific, but metaphorically correct. It is not simply wealth that prevents people from understanding our purpose in life. Those who have great wealth, responsibilities, or addictions can’t hear the harmony of life as easily as those without.

In some ways, this is a sort of existential crisis. If you spend your entire life working for the wrong things, then you’ve essentially done nothing with your life. However, if you spend your entire life searching for the right thing to do and not acting, then you have also done nothing with your life. How then should one go about living? Perhaps the best plan is to achieve a system of checks and balances to act and then review consistently. The Fountain certainly makes the case that it is essential to take a few moments from time to time to listen for harmony.

This movie is about a man’s recognition of the harmony of life through his wife’s illness and despite his “richness.” He is a doctor researching a cure to cancer or some similar ailment. He is obviously talented and has obviously worked very hard throughout his life, but it appears that his work takes on new meaning when his wife becomes ill. This story is interlaced with an older story of a Spanish Conquistador who has similarly worked very hard, but finds his purpose in life takes on new meaning when the Queen of Spain is threatened. This shows that the problems we have with finding this solace within our own lives are not new.

I won’t give away more of the movie even though I’m not sure there’s really a secret to give away. There is a lot of symbolism in the movie and with its short duration it would certainly make for a great discussion afterwards. Some of that symbolism is Christian, and if you are a member of a Bible study, I hope that your group would be open minded enough to talk about such things rather than institutionally ignore them. I recommend that you rent it or add it it to your Netflix list. It’s definitely worth the price of admission.

I have commented before about the how cool Ben & Jerry’s is (pardon the pun), but it’s worth bringing up again because they are introducing a Simpsons brand of Ice Cream. The flavor will be called Duff & D’oh-nuts and it will only be available in Springfield, VT on their all-day movie premire celebration. They are also renaming their Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough to Chocolate Chip Cookie D’oh for the day.

This is just another wonderful movie promotion for the Simpsons Movie, which already has the best movie promo ever under its belt. Seriously, if you haven’t done so yet, check out the pictures on the Simpsons Kwik-E-Mart blog. The makeovers are extensive.

All good things come to an end. Even though I no longer live in Austin, I admit that I feel no small twang of sadness that the Alamo Drafthouse Downtown closed its doors. Perhaps that is a little melodramatic because they are simply changing locations, but this is the original. As the original Alamo blog implies, it’s hard to beat the original. Certainly the spirit of the operation will carry on, even if the location is different.

Well, it’s anybody’s series now. Honestly, I can’t believe that we’re sitting here in this position. I never thought that we’d get past game six in this series. San Antonio was lucky to win game five and needs to get their act together for game seven. I didn’t watch game six, but I suppose I’ll suffer through game seven.

If you’ve been watching the news lately you’ll have seen several individuals garner national attention for various things. Natalee Holloway missing in Aruba. The 11 year old boy scout found after he was missing for four days. Jennifer Wilbanks incited a national press frenzy when she ran away from her husband and extravagent wedding.

These stories are nothing new to the American public, but there have been a number of them recently and they have left me thinking. What is so important about these individuals that separates them from all the other Americans that get kidnapped, get lost, or run away from their weddings? Why do they receive so much attention?

Fame is something pretty powerful in America today. Jennifer Wilbanks has reportedly got a book deal in the works that will make more money than I would likely make in the next ten years. Does a woman who runs away from her family and lie to the police really deserve a book deal like that? It’s probably going to be ghost written for her too.

I haven’t decided what to think about these so-called human interest stories. I’m not sure what else I would put in the press though, so perhaps I should shut up if I don’t have a better idea.

One of my good friends recently sent me a link to one of the funniest collections of Charles Barkley quotes on the Internet. Take a look.

Slashdot recently had an article about who’s duty it is to recycle computer parts. One of the comments was an absolutely hilarious parody of Arlo Guthrie’s Alice’s Restaurant.

Another friend passed along a link to Store Wars, which is really quite well done, even if you don’t care whether or not you’re eating organic foods. You’ve got to tip your hat to the folks that put it together.

One of the things that I wanted to talk about but haven’t blogged about is that I went to the LJB Presidential Library last Saturday. It was really, really good. I didn’t realize how much fun I would have there or I would have gone a long time ago. It has prompted me to want to visit a bunch of the other Presidential Libraries. There was a really cool exibit on “The Swinging Sixties” which was very well done. I was also really impressed with the wall of official Presidential portraits and the selection of gifts from various heads of state. There was a lot of information about the JFK Assassination, which has always fascinated me along with millions of others. I even got a book by Max Holland called The Kennedy Assassination Tapes, which is a collection of transcripts of taped conversations during the LBJ administration about the Kennedy Assassination. It’s really well written and quite interesting. All in all it was a really good trip.

The Pacers lost. I have to say it was quite a moving basketball game. Reggie looked like he could have played another 2 or 3 years, but as he said in one of his many post-game interviews, we should look at how he played in all the games of the series to see if he should continue his career. I grew up watching him play. It’s sad to see him end his career without winning a championship, but it was really nice to see him play the way he did.

Honestly, there’s more to playing the game than winning a championship. There are third stringers with half his talent that manage to get rings on the championship team every year. I don’t want to downplay their contributions to their teams, but it does show that winning a championship doesn’t directly relate to what an individual brings to a team.

Reggie meant so much to the team and to the community because he gave everything he could on and off the court. He stayed in Indiana when someone burned down his house. He holds a charity bowling event at Cooper’s Stardust Bowl every year. He has been loyal in an environment where disloyalty is encouraged. He could have easily left as a free agent for a team where he might have a better shot at a championship. Certainly the Pacers have been a great team over the years, but what team wouldn’t want an absolutely clutch shooting guard?

Reggie stayed though, and they came so close. Reggie’s Pacers were arguably the toughest team that Jordan’s Bulls played against late in Jordan’s career. They lead the league in wins and got to the NBA finals. They came as close as you can come to a championship team without winning. It’s a shame that people are going to hold that over his head.

I recently saw the last Star Wars movie. Twice. I saw it on opening night at the Alamo Drafthouse and then the next day with some guys from work at a more traditional theater. I’m a fan of this one. I really didn’t like the first two prequels, but this one showed me that the series could have been a lot better. I would have smashed the first movie and about half of the second one into one movie. I would have then expanded the second movie to cover more of the Clone Wars and show Anakin and Obi-Wan fighting together. Then, I would have left the third one pretty much as it is. Episode III is really good, even if the first two needed some revision.

Now you have to wonder what’s next. I would like to see about where Yoda came from. In Episode III, Palpatine talks about a Darth Plagius who was able to create life with the force. Wouldn’t it be hilarious if the only life he was able to create was a little green turd named Yoda? I would also like to see what happened with Luke. How does he form the Jedi counsel again? What new Sith lord comes to replace Palpatine and Vader?

It’s West Wing week on Bravo! They claim to be showing West Wing reruns all day and night, but they don’t have one one right now. Either way though, I’m hopeful for tomorrow since it seems like they are doing West Wing episodes all day long. This could mean that every lunch from here to the end of the week I’ll be able to run back and watch the West Wing!

The Pacers play tomorrow night (tonight) in Detroit. It’s a critical game 5. Last time we managed to win a game 5 on the road, but then we blew the game 6 clincher at home. I think it will be a lot harder to manage a game 7 road win in Detroit than it was against Boston. This means of course that game 5 is a very nearly a must win. (As if a game 4 at home to go up 3-1 wasn’t…) Anyhow, I’m actually considering skipping my Bible Study for the game. How bad is that? Will God smite the Pacers if I choose to watch the game?

So I got tickets for the last of the new Star Wars movies almost a month ago and it just happens to directly conflict with game 6 in the Pacers – Pistons series. I’m going to go for the “record the game and hope no one tells me the score” philosophy since I can’t very well pass up seeing the Star Wars movie on opening night. I also found out today that this Friday afternoon my group at work is going to be going to the movie as a team building exercise. Between all the television, sports and movies this week, I can honestly say that I’m gearing up to be very American by Memorial Day.