W’s blag

This post contained a bit too many real life details about people and events, so I’ve edited it away and saved it somewhere else.

It’s not a Proper Boomstick unless it has a switch like this:

Well, pretty much what I expected. It’s a Die Hard movie of course, a John McClane movie. Yipee-ki-yay motherfucker and all that. The plot this time revolves around computers, which of course gives room for much hillarity, Movie OS style.

What’s interesting is how close to realism the movie gets. Yes, most computer systems, even vital infrastructure, will have security flaws that can be exploited. But no, you can’t hire eight crackers to break into eight systems synchronized. Yes, some systems are closed, not hooked up to the internet. But why would an anthrax detection system in a federal building be hooked up so it could be cracked? And what struck me most; yes, there ARE people who would take it all down to prove the point, but NO, they’re not secretly just in it for the money. I sympatised with the badguy until that part. You only have to be a little more insane than me to take it to the level that character would; I’ve exploited security flaws to prove they exist, and to teach the ones that allowed them to exist a lesson. I would of course draw the line when actual people are hurt. But I can see how someone could cross that line, how they could, as the character in the movie states, do it “for the good of the nation”, “better I do it than some foreigner with bad intentions” etc. But then at the end they do a 180, and it’s revealed that it was all a plot to get at the money. I guess it follows the tradition of the previous Die Hard villains, but I think it cheapens this movie somewhat. A villain that would hurt you to prove a point is much more scary than one who’d do it for personal gain, and none of the information on the character indicates he was about anything other than proving a point.

At long last I won the hardest game ever, Nethack. The game lasted over a month, mainly due to me not playing while on vacation. I blame my ascension on the early wishes (first a magic lamp then a random wishing wand) and trying to combine stormbringer and pets, which made me really paranoid and careful with every move. Finding a spellbook of polymorph was the cream on the cake. By the time I entered the quest I had -40-something AC, 300+ hp, and was generally immortal. Knew practically every spell (no charm monster though, no matter how many spellbooks I polymorphed), and had more magic markers than I knew what to do with. Ascending was simple, Death was a wimp, and my only scare was when I fought both the arch priest of Moloch and double-trouble Rodney at the same time, they got me down to half HP, and I wished up some potions of full healing. Next turn a cockatrice showed up, and that was that.