Magic.

Conditions: Overcast, tense.

New Tricks

In the middle of 2009, a new computer virus began to circulate around the world. Called Stuxnet, this was a virus unlike anything seen before. Rather than attack computers in general, this one was specifically targeting computers being used in certain types of Nuclear facilities. Iranian nuclear facilities, in fact. As this virus is being examined, it's becoming ever more clear exactly where it came from.

In interviews over the past three months in the United States and Europe, experts who have picked apart the computer worm describe it as far more complex — and ingenious — than anything they had imagined when it began circulating around the world, unexplained, in mid-2009.

Many mysteries remain, chief among them, exactly who constructed a computer worm that appears to have several authors on several continents. But the digital trail is littered with intriguing bits of evidence.

In early 2008 the German company Siemens cooperated with one of the United States’ premier national laboratories, in Idaho, to identify the vulnerabilities of computer controllers that the company sells to operate industrial machinery around the world — and that American intelligence agencies have identified as key equipment in Iran’s enrichment facilities.

Siemens says that program was part of routine efforts to secure its products against cyberattacks. Nonetheless, it gave the Idaho National Laboratory — which is part of the Energy Department, responsible for America’s nuclear arms — the chance to identify well-hidden holes in the Siemens systems that were exploited the next year by Stuxnet.

The worm itself now appears to have included two major components. One was designed to send Iran’s nuclear centrifuges spinning wildly out of control. Another seems right out of the movies: The computer program also secretly recorded what normal operations at the nuclear plant looked like, then played those readings back to plant operators, like a pre-recorded security tape in a bank heist, so that it would appear that everything was operating normally while the centrifuges were actually tearing themselves apart.

- nytimes.com/

As we know, the Americans and the Israelis have been trying to find a way to shut down the Iranian reactor for ages, out of simple fear that once the Iranians become a nuclear power, they won't be able to be intimidated any more. The options have so far ranged from crippling economic sanctions, to assassination of Iranian scientists, to a full-on military strike on the suspected laboratories (this one not yet attempted, but certainly in the works). Now it looks that a fourth option has been employed: the most complex computer virus ever built was somehow smuggled into the Iranian facility (which is not connected to the Internet for security reasons) and set onto the computers there, where it proceeded to wreak enough havoc that the Iranians have been set back at least four years.

This is a new, somewhat Bond-ian approach. However, as clever as it may be, I think it still fails for the same reason that just bombing the facility would fail: the west is not addressing the primary problem. It's not that the Iranians are only trying this because nobody is stopping them, and so will just give up as soon as someone attempts to stop them. It's that the Iranians believe they have to do this to protect themselves. Therefore everything the west has done so far has only reinforced that mindset the Iranians are in - that they are under siege, are surrounded on all sides, and therefore need a nuclear program to defend themselves. Coming up with a clever computer virus may have slowed them down, and done so in one of the least-offensive ways, but ultimately the U.S and Israel are going to have to play this a lot smarter to get the outcome they actually want.



Film Review: Tangled.

You've got to give some credit for persistence. Faced with new animated movies coming out seemingly every other week, created using nothing but computers, and about all sorts of crazy modern nonsense, Disney corporation has decided to remain true to her roots, and so has released Tangled, a somewhat revised re-telling of the Rapunzel fairy story, but still in the grand style of hand-animation, with lots of musical numbers. To be honest, I can't even remember how the classic version goes, but this one has the princess Rapunzel blessed as a baby so that her hair is magical, and then is kidnapped by an evil witch and imprisoned in a tower for eighteen years so the witch can use Rapunzel's hair to stay forever young.

Where things probably get a bit modern in this version is when a debonair thief who's just heisted the royal jewels, bursts into the tower in search of a hideout, and eventually agrees to help Rapunzel temporarily escape the tower in order to see the annual lantern festival in person, a festival that always happens on her birthday. Now I may be getting older, but try as I might I could not really find one redeeming characteristic of the thief, up until the end of the movie anyway. He steals the crown, tips off the guards, abandons his fellow thieves, and breaks into the tower. What kind of modern hero is this? Anyway, Rapunzel can bring out the good in anyone, and away the two of them go. In hot pursuit of are the palace guards, the witch, the thief's two quite-angry former associates, and a particularly dedicated horse. Can they evade their pursuers and get to the festival in time? Well yes of course they can, but that's not the point.

In this retelling, Rapunzel's story becomes one of self-discovery, and self-empowerment, as she learns how to deal with the outside world, falls in love with the thief, and eventually confronts the witch and learns what actually happened to her as a baby, and who she really is. I don't care who you are, or where you're from, this is a magical story that will suit anyone, full of fun and wonder and heart. Rapunzel, in fact the entire cast, are animated and voiced absolutely perfectly, as is the world they inhabit. The story hinges on her reactions to everything, and it's all done so well that you are effortlessly swept along, even through the inevitable musical numbers. And the ending is actually quite dramatic and ultimately very satisfying. Disney proves with this film that they still have what it takes to go toe to toe with Pixar, not by fighting fire with fire, but by doing what they do best. Four lanterns out of Five.


- Peace out