Are the movies to blame for the hacker stereotype? Damian Gordon of the School of Computing, at Dublin Institute of Technology, Ireland, is not so sure. He has homed in on the hacking in live-action, non-documentary movies from the last four decades and come to some interesting conclusions. Here’s a list of the hacker movies made before the World Wide Web…

Hot Millions (1968)

Peter Ustinov plays Marcus Pendleton, who uses social engineering techniques and disables security systems to create fraudulent identities, in order to send numerous claim checks to himself

The Italian Job (1969)

Computer expert Professor Simon Peach, portrayed by comedian Benny Hill, hacks into the Turin traffic control system in order to create a massive traffic jam as a diversion for a massive gold heist.

Star Wars: A New Hope (1977)

Robot R2D2 interfaces with the Death Star computer systems and hacks in to locate Princess Leia in the Detention Block, and controls the garbage compactor to prevent the heroes of the movies from being crushed to death.

Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan (1982)

While under attack the captain of spaceship U.S.S. Enterprise wirelessly hacks into the enemy spaceship computer systems in order to lower its shields.

Tron (1982)

Jeff Bridges, playing Kevin Flynn, hacks into his former employer’s computer systems to prove he was wrongly fired from his job. First mention of the term “hacking” in the movies.

Superman III (1983)

Gus Gorman (Richard Pryor) uses his computer skills to embezzle a large sum of money from the company payroll. Hacking involves a salami slicing attack.

War Games (1983)

High school student David Lightman, played by Matthew Broderick, accidentally hacks into a military supercomputer and almost starts World War III.

Prime Risk (1985)

Julie Collins (Toni Hudson) forges ATM cards to steal money from a bank in revenge for it failing to give her a job and inadvertently stumbles on big-time international hackers attempting to ruin the Federal Reserve and destroy the US monetary system.

Real Genius (1985)

Chris Knight (Val Kilmer) is building a chemical laser system and meets Lazlo Hollyfeld (Jon Gries) who uses his computer skills to discover an unscrupulous professor plans to use the laser as a weapon.

Weird Science (1985)

Two teenage computer hackers, Gary Wallace (Anthony Michael Hall) and Wyatt Donnelly (Ilan Mitchell-Smith) design the perfect woman on their home computer and then hack into a US Government mainframe to create a simulation of their woman. A bizarre electrical storm leads to a real woman being created with hilarious and poignant consequences (yeah, right).

Jumpin’ Jack Flash (1986)

Encrypted comms and password cracking embroil Terry Doolittle (Whoopi Goldberg) in an international spy story.

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986)

High school student Ferris Bueller (Matthew Broderick) hacks into the school computer to delete his many absences.

Terminal Entry (1986)

A dropped candy bar leads high school hacker Bob (Patrick Labyorteaux) to uncover a terrorist network.

Bellman and True (1987)

Computer expert Hiller (Bernard Hill) loses his job and sells a “worthless” computer tape to bankrobbers who kidnap his son, force him to decode the information on the tape, which turns out to be a map of the National General Bank security system.

Die Hard (1988)

Alan Rickman playing “German” terrorist Hans Gruber commands technical henchman Theo to hack into a computer system to open the vault containing millions.

In addition, Gordon discusses 20 hacker movies in the 1990s including, of course, The Matrix, Independence Day, Jurassic Park, Sneakers, and Hackers. The 2000s had 15 hacker movies, says Gordon, among them Takedown, Swordfish, Foolproof, Storm Watch, Die Hard 4, and a remake of The Italian Job.

Of the fifty hacker movies on which Gordon focused in his complete list, 8 were hacker specific, 5 were heist, 18 heroic, 15 sci-fi, and 4 true life. 21 hackers were portrayed as 25 years old or younger, 37 hackers were portrayed as 25 to 50, and just 2 movie hackers were 50 to 75 years old. 19 hacker characters work in the computer industry, 17 were “full-time” hackers, 12 students, and 12 hackers with other professions. But, the most telling statistics come when you look at the morals of the movie hackers. 44 hackers were good guys and a mere 10 were the bad guys.

The stereotypical definition of a hacker is a corrosive one as it pervades popular culture and could even blind policy makers to genuine threats to computer and communications security as well as lowering scientific literacy and comfort levels with computer use at work and at play for many people.

It is clear from Gordon’s analysis that the popular cultural image of a hacker as being a teenager in their bedroom is not being generated from the movies that feature hackers, Gordon explains. “In fact, the majority of hackers in movies are good guys between 25 and 50 years old who work in either the computer industry or is a full-time hackers.” This matches the hacker’s own definition of what a hacker is, rather than the popular stereotype and, concludes Gordon, could help the good-guy hacker community shake off the stereotype.

Following a comment on this blog, I asked Gordon about the male to female ratio:

Apparently, of 60 hackers listed (in 50 movies) just 7 were female,
although this is about 12% which is, he says, “a reasonably good reflection of reality”.

The characters were:

• Toni Hudson in Prime Risk (1985)
• Sandra Bullock in The Net (1995)
• Angelina Jolie in Hackers (1995)
• Jennifer Jason Leigh in eXistenZ (1999)
• Carrie-Anne Moss in The Matrix (1999)
• Kristin Booth in Foolproof (2003)
• Nikki DeLoach in The Net 2.0 (2006)

You can find a full listing of all the hacker characters here.

Gordon added that, “I will just note that on TV there are a lot more female hackers, here is a Powerpoint on that. Perhaps that is a result of the fact that on TV men stereotypically do the action and women do the passive stuff.

Damian Gordon (2010). Forty years of movie hacking: considering the potential implications of the popular media representation of computer hackers from 1968 to 2008 Int. J. Internet Technology and Secured Transactions, 2 (1/2), 59-87

Post from: David Bradley's Sciencetext Tech Talk

Forty years of hackers at the movies

After an initial flurry of activity when you first created the site, the search engine will have recognized that nothing changed between consecutive visits and will have settled itself down to visiting just once a week, month, every few months, or whatever…what happens next is that Google may consider your static site to be unimportant to its users and lower your ranking in the in its search engine results pages (SERPs).

With the handful of static sites I manage, I’ve not actually seen this de-ranking effect, but it may happen so a new feature in Google’s online RSS Reader tool could be of interest. Google has added the capability to “create” a virtual feed for any static site and add it to the site updates you follow and let you know of any changes should they ever happen on the site.

Logically, that means that even though a site may be static, by adding it to your reader, you are telling Google to spider your site on a regular if not frequent basis nevertheless. After all, if it were not doing so it would not be able to give you an RSS alert to let you know that the site had been changed.

Whether this trick actually has any benefits for sites that have not suffered de-ranking despite being static remains to be seen. But, it’s worth a try. It would also give you a useful way of keeping an eye on other people’s backburner sites you don’t visit often. You could even check whether any of the sites you run have been changed by hackers. That said, more acute “zero-day” observation of those sites would make more sense if they are at all important to you despite being static.

Thanks to the omnipresent and seemingly omniscient Ann Smarty for the tip off to this new feature. Brian Shih made the official announcement of this feature on 25th January in the Google Reader Blog.

Post from: David Bradley's Sciencetext Tech Talk

Force Google to spider your site

Add an optimal ad unit in the most prominent and appealing place on your blog. So, you ask, what’s the optimal unit and where should I stick it?

Google and countless A-list bloggers will tell you it’s the 300×250 with a color scheme that matches that of your blog theme. Lots of people use it but don’t always put it in the best place on their site. The optimal position for this big box of ads is right below the title matter and above the main text of every post on your blog.

Here’s a short video showing you how to create that 300×250 ad

Now, I know what you’re thinking that’s going to look truly obtrusive and awful and really screw up your blog layout…well…maybe it does, but there is a caveat. First, position your 300×250 where I suggest and make sure you’ve set a channel to monitor performance. Now, you’re probably imagining that this is going to irritate your regular readers, your RSS subscribers, and visitors from social media sites, twitter, facebook, delicious, digg, etc etc. Well, it probably would to a degree. But, here’s the twist, use a little bit of scripting (or a Wordpress plugin) to check where your readers are coming from and switch off the AdSense just for those visitors and leave it running for everyone who comes to your blog via a search engine.

The advantages of doing this are twofold: First, you’re no longer annoying your social media visitors who are probably ad blind anyway and never click ads. Second, your click through rate will go up partly because you’ve optimised the position of your 300×250 optimised ad block and partly because you’re no longer advertising to the ad blind and when your CTR goes above a certain threshold the price paid for ads on your site goes up. That means that ultimately your page eCPM goes up.

You can even tell your readers that you’re running AdSense in this way and encourage them to bookmark your site, subscribe to the RSS or whatever so that they avoid the ads in future if they arrived via a search engine first time round.

Give it a try, I cannot go into financial details, obviously, but I’ve seen a decent rise in revenues since I optimized and implemented this system on a couple of blogs.

Post from: David Bradley's Sciencetext Tech Talk

One simple trick to boost Adsense earnings

But, that seemed a bit boring to me. Much more fun would be to persuade lookalike celebrities to replace their Facebook photo with a picture of you! We could call it “antigänger week”

Intute’s Paul Meehan has already got Dan Ackroyd to swap his.

It seems Laboratory Talk’s Russ Swan is going to have a word with Richard Branson.

Richard P Grant of f1000 doesn’t look like Richard E Grant unfortunately, but he does bear a passing resemblance to Bill Shatner.

So, which celeb am I going to have talk to? Christopher Eccleston perhaps? Maybe Woody Harrelson? Probably more chance of persuading Russ Abbott…what do you think?

Post from: David Bradley's Sciencetext Tech Talk

Facebook Doppelgängers

Across the blogosphere one might say instead, “your widgets are showing”. As a gent, I’d be discrete in letting a fellow blogger know that there is potential for virtual fallout.

However, I spotted a little box, in a prominent place on the blog of a new Twitter follower:

This section is widgetized. If you would like to add content to this section, you may do so by using the Widgets panel from within your WordPress Admin Dashboard. This Widget Section is called “Skinny Right Sidebar”

I, of course, immediately alerted the blogger to the issue, off piste, as it were. Hopefully, he’s zipping up right now.

I was curious as to whether other bloggers might be displaying their widgets similarly and so Googled that phrase.

43,000 hits! No Googlewhackblatt this.

I suspect they’re all using the Wordpress theme Flexxprofessional, as was the original blog, but a similar problem can arise with other themes and other blogs. As with ones flies, it is always wise to double check that nothing is showing that ought not to be showing before going public.

Are your widgets showing? I hope mine are not, but if they ever were, I’d hope you’d let me know that low flying license had expired!

Post from: David Bradley's Sciencetext Tech Talk

Hey pal, your widgets are showing!

According to Jobs’ speech it fills the gap between the smart phone and laptop. Presumably, without all the silliness of the netbook. But, for what purpose?

Can anyone say why this mashup device between smartphone and laptop exists and who is actually going to buy one and use it? Sure it’s pretty. Pretty pointless.

iPad? iNot!

Meanwhile, here’s the Apple iPad 2010 (BCE)

Post from: David Bradley's Sciencetext Tech Talk

iPad – pretty, pointless

But, did you ever stop to think that just as in the offline world, people do judge you on initial impressions? What do those pink sash, stacked heels, gold satin loonpants and DD virtual breast implants say about you as a male bricklayer from Detroit? And, what do fellow ‘lifers really think about an exotic dancer masquerading as a male bricklayer from Detroit in her greasy tee-shirt, steel-toed workboots and crooked smile?

Leonie O’Brien of Trinity College Colac in Victoria, Australia and John Murnane of the University of Melbourne, Australia, carried out a little experiment recently to test the old maxim – don’t judge a book by its cover or its more modern, don’t judge a geek by its avatar.

They created a male and female avatar in a controlled environment with each avatar having an “attractive” and an “unattractive” representation. A computer algorithm decided what was attractive and what was not, which presumably helped them choose stereotypically attractive and unattractive characteristics that would appeal, or not, to the majority of users, without personal subjectivity intervening. Admittedly, they didn’t tweak clothing as I may have suggested for comic effect above, but they did use the algo to fine-tune the facial features of their test avatars. As these avatars, a male, “boy next door” avatar called Bob Blum and a female “girl next door” called Dimity Lei, went about being active in their community a fairly obvious phenomenon emerged depending on how the team had tweaked their attractiveness.

“Making the avatars attractive was enjoyable,” the team says, but, “making them unattractive was far
more interesting.” The first thing they changed was facial symmetry, eyes were widened, noses enlarged, and their mouths given a crooked tilt, lips were made narrow and pale. Bob and Dimity put on a little weight and their arms and legs were made disproportional. Basically, they both got a virtual make-under. Changes were not extreme, just enough to make them unattractive, but not so un-human that they’d attract attention on that score alone.

They dropped Bob and Dimity on to Help Island at the same time of day (attractive and unattractive on different days) and watched the ensuing interactions.

The attractive male received the most total attention. Nine out of 12 passing avatars made some kind of spoken communication with him, the team says. The attractive female received the most attention from males. Some were very forward in immediately making comments about her body, but the majority of males were offering to teach her things or asking her to show them certain things such as how to
change outfits. Males tended to group around this female and all talk at once, vying for her attention.

The unattractive male was largely ignored by those walking by. Two of the three people who did speak to him said “hi” and moved on, ignoring his responses.

The unattractive female received a quick “hello” from one male avatar who then simply flew off. No females made any attempt to come near the unattractive female avatar. It appeared that some even deliberately avoided her.

In line with similar studies in real life, we found that attractive people are more likely to be included in conversations and interactions in a virtual online environment and are more likely to be offered friendship than their more unattractive counterparts.

This brings to light some interesting questions about the deeper interactions that can occur in virtual worlds and why some users deliberately choose an “unattractive” avatar, in a world where you can pretend to be perfect why would you choose to be ugly, especially when it seems to arouse suspicion and deters conversation.

“It is interesting that these reactions occurred despite the fact that all operators know that the physical (or other) characteristics of an avatar are in no way necessarily representative of that person in real life, and in fact, probably are not. Is there an underlying assumption that the physical appearance of the avatar is somehow an actual reflection of the personality of the person controlling it or does physical appearance alone dictate their reactions, dominating over other characteristics?” the team says.

It seems that if you want to get more friends in the virtual world it pays to make your avatar stereotypically attractive, don’t twist its mouth, make sure the eyes are nice and straight and perhaps opt for the satin loonpants and DD cup, especially if you’re some average Joe from Detroit and looking for some virtual company.

O’Brien, L., & Murnane, J. (2009). An investigation into how avatar appearance can affect interactions in a virtual world International Journal of Social and Humanistic Computing, 1 (2) DOI: 10.1504/IJSHC.2009.031007

Post from: David Bradley's Sciencetext Tech Talk

You and your ugly avatar

But, I rarely comment and until today hadn’t even added my avatar to my Youtube profile (that’s remedied now). One thing I certainly had not done was to record a Youtube video of my own, but that is not a work in progress (the script is written, but I’m yet to fire up my webcam!).

Meanwhile, I just heard about the Youtube Comment Snob add-on for the Firefox browser, which lets you filter out moronic or expletive-rich comments from your stream. I will be enabling that once I get my video uploaded. Pity there’s not such a filter for blogs, or real life, even.

Post from: David Bradley's Sciencetext Tech Talk

Youtube comment snob filter

Today, the bug could be exploited and let a hacker run any piece of malicious code they liked on a 32-bit Windows computer without too much trouble. But, I doubt there are even as many people still running 16-bit software these days as using IE6, so isn’t it time MS deprecated, or least disabled, this virtual DOS machine by now?

Well, while we wait for the patch. The quick fix is very easy to do. First, backup your registry, then copy the following code as plain text into a text editor and save the file with a name like “VDMdisallow.reg”

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\AppCompat]
“VDMDisallowed”=dword:00000001

Now, double click the file from file explorer and let Windows incorporate it into your registry by clicking yes when the popup asks. Reboot. That’s it. You’re now running a much tighter 32-bit Windows machine that will no longer allow 16-bit applications load.

If you happened to still be running 16-bit apps, you would want to think very hard about upgrading your software. But, if you’re feeling nostalgic, here’s a site that will show you what it was like to be using Windows 17 years ago.

Post from: David Bradley's Sciencetext Tech Talk

17-year old Windows bug fix

Apparently, it’s available for Windows 7, XP, Vista, Mac, Blackberry, and iPhone. That’s great, <sarc>it’s just what we needed</sarc>: the chance to irritate our fellow computer users with another symbol to add to all the smilies, l33t and acronyms <sarc>ROFL</sarc>.

I can see you’re so totally convinced and ready to spend your two bucks so you can be facetiously enabled when you send your next email. <sarc>Of course you are.</sarc>

So, here’s what it will look like when you send it to a user who doesn’t have this one character font loaded on their device:

“embedcharcode-license:server-notfound”

or if you’re lucky

“?”

<sarc>Amazing.</sarc>

It’s true that the faceless nature of electronic communication, which so lacks the nuance of facial expression and body language can lead to ambiguities, especially when someone is being ironic, facetious, or sarcastic. And, the great unwashed of the internet will always find a way to take any remark literally. But, you know what I say to that? <notsarc>Tough!</notsarc>

Post from: David Bradley's Sciencetext Tech Talk

Sarcastic punctuation, next big thing