Month: January 2006

Categories
Diversity Weblogging

Blogrolls redux

Lest anyone think that I’m hoping to get listed in the weblog roll of the Women’s Media Center, perish the thought from your mind. If anything, this just demonstrates, to me, the evils of blogrolls–their divisiveness and their arbitrary exclusivity (those with friendly neighborhood weblog rolls excepted–don’t hit me). Especially when used with a site purporting to be the only place for information on women.

I’m still amazed that a site starting in 2005 would dare to imply it is the definitive expert on any topic, much less one as immense as women and women and media. However, it’s what I would expect from an organization led by Jane Fonda–another reason why I would not want to be listed at the site. I have a very low opinion of Ms. Jane Fonda.

Categories
Diversity Weblogging

Feminists and other snobs

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

My appreciations for Frank Paynter for including me with other fine company in his recommendations of women webloggers for the Women’s Media Center. I, like others, was also left rather breathless by the sweeping arrogance of the site’s byline:

The WMC website is the only place for news on women; links to women columnists, bloggers, media organizations, and more…

The links to women webloggers are primarily to those that might be labeled ‘pure feminist’ weblogs, which I guess is the dividing line between women worthy of inclusion and those not. I read several of the ones listed, and they are terrific and should be included: in WMC and everywhere. It isn’t this that leads me to sigh, and feel tired; it is the lack of depth in the list, which shows an unspoken but very real bias among feminists against those of us in the technology field.

What these fine ladies seem to forget is that while they are busy writing about the bias against women, we’re busy out there being the women suffering the bias. We’re the ones in fields that have, if we’re lucky, one woman in four workers. We’re the ones showing that women can aspire to fields and jobs other than mommy, wife, nurse, teacher, and social worker in a women’s center.

Many of us are professionals in media, too, though we’ll not get Nobel prizes, or offered chairs at Harvard. We write on technology, and add that odd feminine element now and again to conferences and book shelves. We help keep the myth alive that any little girl can grow up to be anything she wants. We do so in many cases by having to fight men who don’t want us around. Worse, who don’t even see us when we are.

This we accept as part of the job. We don’t like it, but we were once the little girls who believed we could grow up to do anything we want, and we’re not going to give it up because of some adversity. What truly hurts, though, is we usually do this fight alone, because many of the outspoken feminists are snobs, and to them, we just don’t count.

Categories
Stuff

Hold the dew-drenched bluebells: a review of King Kong

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I treated myself to a lady night out and went to see the new King Kong. The small neighborhood theater was showing it on one of the smaller screens, and there were two women together in one side, a man by himself in the back, and an older couple behind me, to the left, and that was it.

I sat forward, close to the screen, with a small bag of popcorn and water I brought from home. The seats are actually pretty comfortable but it was cold, so I snuggled under my coat. The sound levels were just right and so was the screen size. As for the movie, I thought it was an excellent adaption of the 1933 classic. The movie was long–three hours–but I wasn’t tired until the very end when I creaked to my feet during the ending credits.

Note that what follows could be considered somewhat a spoiler, though reading wouldn’t lessen enjoyment of the movie.

I thought Peter Jackson did some things exceptionally well in the movie, and others could have used improvement. For instance, his Kong was magnificent–real and vibrant, and absolutely wonderful. The interaction between him and Ann Darrow (played by Naomi Watts) was easily the most charismatic of the movie, though I consider Adrian Brody to be one of the most sexy men I’ve seen in movies (outside of Johnny Depp, of course).

I liked Jackson’s portrayal of Darrow as a strong woman, capable of caring for herself, possessing of both spirit and a sense of humor. This didn’t lessen her need for help to escape, or protection from the giant beasties running around Skull Island. Unlike in the original, she didn’t need to be the helpless, screaming woman to make Kong more frightening. The impact of Kong’s size was more evident when he had her in his hand and was running with her through the jungle, her being slapped all about by trees and plants.

Darrow and Kong, excellent. At the same time, though, Jackson could have cut out 20 minutes of staring into Watts tear filled blue eyes. At three hours, we could have safely cut at least that much with no impact on the showing. One can only stare at wet, blue eyes for so long before it gets tedious. Jackson did the same thing with Lord of the Rings, too, except there we sat staring at Liv Tyler’s tear filled blue eyes. I can only guess that at some time in the past, Jackson must have heard about eyes like ‘dew drenched bluebells’, because he spends too much time in his movies having us stare at them.

I wasn’t particularly enamored with Jackson’s interpretation of the character of Carl Denham (played by Jack Black). He crossed a line at some point that made Denham less an obsessed director and more a sociopath. Still, the scene where Darrow crosses to safety, as she passes Denham and the others waiting to trap Kong and he pays her no attention–this after a voyage filled with fulcome compliments and seemingly sincere concern–is one of the most pivotal and best in the entire movie.

I did like Jackson’s version of the shipboard members, but where he excelled was with the island natives; his natives were superb. They were otherworldly and horribly frightening–about what one would expect of people forced to live on the edges of the land, because of the fear of what lay on the other side of the wall. The jagged, dangerous and fogged in approach to the island only helped to add to the effect, and I was mesmerized by the scenes. It was wondrous.

I was less impressed with the beasties in the island. The mix of Kong with the dinosaurs from Jurassic Park was, I thought, disappointing. No matter how much he tried, Jackson was not going to be able to get the dinosaurs to be as good as Jurassic. More importantly, though, this was a cheap gimmick the movie did not need. If we consider that King Kong is big because all of the island creatures were big, why would we need dinosaurs?

Big bugs, big bats, King Kong, and a T-Rex: which of these don’t fit?

However, Jackson made up for it by the scenes on the boat and back in New York. The scenes in New York were worth going to the movie just to see. In addition, there was enough action, and heights, to have me jerking about in my chair and probably providing entertainment for all of those seated behind me. I’m with AKMA in I almost hurt myself against my seat trying to pull back from the scenes on the skyscrapers.

The original King Kong is still, after all these years, an excellent movie; yes even with the claymation awkwardness. I was wary about another new Kong, after that abysmal version from the 1980’s. I was concerned that the story would be lost in the effects. However, Jackson’s King Kong did not disappoint. On the contrary: it made for a delightful lady night out. I hope, though, that in his next movie, Jackson holds the dew drenched bluebells

Categories
Technology

Serious Windows security flaw

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Thanks to Ken Camp we’re warned about an extremely serious Windows vulnerability.

The flaw, which allows hackers to insert malicious computer programs into seemingly innocuous image files, was discovered last week.

But the potential for damaging attacks increased dramatically at the weekend after a group of computer hackers published the source code they used to exploit it.

Unlike most attacks, which require victims to download or execute a suspect file, the new vulnerability makes it possible for users to infect their computers with spyware or a virus simply by viewing a web page, e-mail or instant message that contains a contaminated image.

There is no official Microsoft patch, and until there is, I’m keeping my Windows 2000 dual boot firmly fixed on Ubuntu. If you’re running XP there is an unofficial patch.

In the meantime, if you’re running an unpatched Windows machine, I would strongly suggest that you not follow any links that appear in my or anyone else’s comments — even if the person writing the comment seems to be someone you know. Anyone can use any name with a comment (even someone else’s name), and I don’t filter links.

All you have to do is open one email, IM, or web page with an infected image — or use something like Google Desktop, which indexes such.

Ad Makers are exploiting this vulernability to infest your machines with spyware.

But before you click that link–you sure you want to do that?

A weblogger named Jesper who says he’s a Senior Security Strategist in the Security Technology Unit at Microsoft wrote unofficially on workarounds et al on this issue.
His view of the unofficial non-Microsoft kissed patch is: don’t use it.

Again, it is risk management. If you have extremely high security requirements, you may want to go so far as using something as drastic as an unofficial patch. However, in that situation you are probably not willing to trust a third-party packaged patch anyway. The unknown risk of issues with an unofficial patch is pretty high. The cost of implementation ranges from low in a very managed environment, to very high in an unmanaged environment. If your risk and the cost of the attack is very high then you may want to consider the unofficial patch, but I cannot in the best conscience recommend it right now.

This after listing a bunch of options that even he admits won’t likely protect a computer, especially with the new malware exploits. He’s speaking privately, though, and not officially so we have to factor that in our interpretation–except we have to assume that since he’s a ’security consultant’ he’s fully aware of the impact of his position on people reading his words.

Some folk would say this is the power of weblogging; this real company people writing to real weblogs saying real things. To that I say, “Bullshit!” This is the weakness of weblogging — no one says anything directly. It’s all a game, and those of us who are forced into the game are stuck trying to figure out the rules before we get swept from the board.

Jesper isn’t condemning the patch because he knows it to be flawed or unworkable, but because it isn’t Microsoft. Pure and simple. And he’s doing so as one of us, which is supposed to what? Increase his credibility?

Well, since Microsoft is the one who put out the code, and has downplayed the vulnerabilities (”We have determined that an attacker would have no way to force users to visit such a malicious Web site”–this from a weblog entry), as well as be less than concerned about putting out a timely fix (”we will release a fix via our regular monthly security release…Have a Happy New Year!”), I have to wonder who exactly it is we are supposed to trust?

Categories
Weather

Fighting fires

We got our first tornado warnings this morning, before a storm came through that blasted light and sound against my windows. At least we’ve had rain, unlike the folks in Oklahoma and Texas, who are battling some fairly serious plains fires. Too bad these states didn’t get the rain the folks in Northern California received.

Speaking of fires, I appreciate Jeneane passing the Pew Survey torch on to me, but I have little interest in doing more than give a quick cursory glance at the findings. There are others who have written in detail on the report. I would say that the researchers had a hypothesis going in, and then found the data to support it. If they had come out saying “Women prefer purple dots on yellow, while men prefer yellow dots on purple”, they would have found the data to support this, too.

Me, I’m more interested in watching the weather.