Strengthening Digital Defenses

Just as the invention of the atomic bomb changed warfare and deterrence 64 years ago, a new international race has begun to develop cyberweapons and systems to protect against them.

(click on map to enlarge)

Thousands of daily attacks on federal and private computer systems in the United States — many from China and Russia, some malicious and some testing chinks in the patchwork of American firewalls — have prompted the Obama administration to review American strategy.

President Obama is expected to propose a far larger defensive effort in coming days, including an expansion of the $17 billion, five-year program that Congress approved last year, the appointment of a White House official to coordinate the effort, and an end to a running bureaucratic battle over who is responsible for defending against cyberattacks.

The full story is here, courtesy New York Times, David E. Sanger, John Markoff and Thom Shanker reporting.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/28/us/28cyber.html?pagewanted=1&th&emc=th

Back to the Future with Max Headroom

Say hello again to Max Headroom – the first computer generated TV host.

Ironically, this Max Headroom episode is about Blipverts, little blasts of TV ads that make the audience’s heads explode, and, this video is interrupted by quick, current day web ads, that... you get the idea.

Suggestion: FF to spot 20 minutes remain, when Max Headroom is born. It’s here that the show kicks into high gear. Here's the link:

http://www.joost.com/175003l/t/Max-Headroom-Blipverts

In the premiere episode, set in an anonymous, yet uncomfortably familiar world "20 minutes into the future," television has become the only growth industry and ratings are the networks only concern.

The Max Headroom character originated in 1985-86 as an announcer for a music video British television channel, Channel 4, called The Max Headroom Show. The intent was to portray a futuristic computer-generated character. Max Headroom appeared as a stylized head on TV against harsh primary color rotating-line backgrounds, and he became well known for his jerky techno-stuttering American-accented speech, wisecracks, and puns

The Original Max Talking Headroom Show was made by Cinemax in 1987.

Network 23 is revealed as an omnipotent conglomerate that monitors the world through hundreds of satellites. In this forbidding society, household television sets have no "off" switches and communication is total and instantaneous.

Corrupt, manipulative executives have enabled the Network to become the world's most powerful station, due largely to the invention and secret use of "Blipverts," television commercials that are compressed and transmitted into the viewers' minds to prevent "channel switching."

But a lethal side-effect of "Blipverts" on some viewers leads to a series of extraordinary "accidents" that the Network board members try to hide from the public.

When the Network's star investigative reporter, Edison Carter (Matt Frewer), discovers that his own organization is behind this diabolical plot, he sets out to expose the cover-up. During his investigation, Carter is involved in a near-fatal incident, and nervous Network executives take him for a computerized memory scan to see what he has learned.

Bryce Lynch (Chris Young), the Network's brilliant, teenaged head of research and development, uses the opportunity to test his new invention, which records a subject's memory while computerizing its image on the screen.

This test results in the accidental "birth" of Carter's computerized alter-ego, Max Headroom (Frewer), a stuttering blend of human mind and powerful microchip, who inhabits the television airwaves. Carter and Max join forces under the watchful eyes of Network controller Theora Jones (Amanda Pays) and continue the investigation.

Trivia:

The real image of Max was not computer generated. Computing technology in the mid-1980s was not sufficiently advanced for a full-motion, voice-synced human head to be practical for a television series. Max's image was actually that of actor Matt Frewer in latex and foam prosthetic makeup with a fiberglass suit created by Peter Litten and John Humphreys of Coast to Coast Productions in the UK. This was then superimposed over a moving geometric background. Even the background was not actual computer graphics at first; it was hand-drawn cell animation like the "computer-generated" animations in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy TV series. Later in the U.S. version they were actually generated by a Commodore Amiga computer. But when these things were combined with clever editing, the appearance of a computer-generated human head was convincing to many.

Pure as Driven Snow

Adult film actress Marilyn Chambers, the onetime Ivory Snow model who gained greater fame as the star of the X-rated "Behind the Green Door," was found dead Sunday by her teenage daughter at her home in Southern California. She was 56.

Authorities have not released a cause of death.

Ms. Chambers, given name Marilyn Briggs, was central to the erotic empire built by the late Mitchell brothers - Jim and Artie - at their Mitchell Brothers O'Farrell Theatre, now in its 40th year.

Ten years ago, San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown proclaimed a "Marilyn Chambers Day," praising the porn queen for her "artistic presence," her "vision" and her "energy."

"That wasn't from any personal knowledge. That was all part of the allure of San Francisco," Brown said Monday. "At the time that she was doing what she was doing, it created an interest nationally if not internationally in our city. And people would come here to see if Marilyn Chambers was really dressed in snowflakes."

The snowflakes reference goes back to her debut as a teenage model for Ivory Snow, which featured her on a laundry detergent box as a young mother cuddling a laughing baby.

from San Francisco Chronicle