Yes, the R-rated DVD

Video & DVD

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KILL-BILL-2

Yes, the R-rated DVD the kids have been waiting for: the ultra violent and a tad clichéd Kill Bill – Volume 2. A dulling experience that is never more than the sum of its well-crafted parts, there’s a lot less action second time out, and a strange, tired melancholy taking the place of the adrenaline saturated buzz saw of fury that pulled young men into Volume 1. The story begins in the same place as its predecessor: in that El Paso wedding chapel where the villainous title character (David Carradine) left his nameless protégé-assassin (Uma Thurman) with a bullet in her head — only this time we see the whole setup to the crime. From there, the script jumps back to where Bill 1 ended, four years later with the heroine on the vengeance trail. As dramatically underwhelming, pointless and downright silly as the first volume, Quentin Tarantino’s love of 70s blaxpolitation and chop-socky junk films finally becomes what we’ve suspected all along: a dubious aesthetic in compensatory service of the director’s lonely childhood.


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In my book, Julia Stiles can do no wrong. In The Prince and Me, a traditional fairy tale wrapped in a cloak of modernity, Ms. Stiles plays Paige Morgan, a hard-working pre-med student whose every waking moment is devoted to achieving the grades necessary to ensure acceptance to Johns Hopkins. Into the picture comes Prince Edvard Valdemar Dangaard (Luke Mably), or Eddie as he is sometimes known, the wild and bored crown prince of Denmark who, in looking for a distraction, decides to spend a year at an American university. Next thing you know, the two are in love, and …. Director Martha Coolidge brings a nice feminist twist to what is most assuredly the very best of the plethora of teen-oriented Cinderella-themed movies which have saturated the multiplexes this year. A great DVD rental.

Security, A Virus Tutorial, and Windows XP SP 2 On Its Way

Web & Tech

TECH-TUESDAY

Internet chaos was caused by one boy


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According to a story in Britain’s Daily Telegraph, Sven Jaschan (pictured to your left), an 18-year-old German boy, is responsible for 70 per cent of all viruses received worldwide in the first half of 2004.
Not only did Jaschan create the Sasser worm, he is also behind all 28 variations of the Netsky virus that continues to be sent out in millions of infected e-mails each month. Jaschan told the German magazine Stern that he spread the viruses to gain his peers’ respect.

“I felt as if I had written a first-class essay. How Netsky spread, I think it’s terrific, and my classmates thought I was terrific. Then it was reported on TV. That was cool. Only occasionally did I wake up in the middle of the night and think, yikes, there might be trouble.”


Jaschan is currently seeking employment with a computer security company, hoping to turn from poacher to gamekeeper in the still nascent computer industry.
Just What Is a Virus, Anyway? Below, a Boot Camp on Malware

A virus reproduces, usually without your permission or knowledge. In general terms they have an infection phase where they reproduce widely and an attack phase where they do whatever damage they are programmed to do.


ILL-COMPUTER

From Bagle.AC to Agent.AE, from Netsky.P, Sasser.B, MyDoom.P and Beagle.AO, to a myriad of other malware intrusions, there’s a war going on in your computer life.
What to do? Well, for one, you can protect yourself from those miscreant malware intrusions. Two, you can keep yourself well informed; and, a good place to start would be with the Computer Knowledge Virus Tutorial.
The virus tutor map will provide you with an introductory insight into the topics covered in the tutorial, which range from the common behaviour of most viruses to hardware and software threats, to the types of viruses (polymorphic, camouflage, stealth, and a dozen more varieties), how they infect your computer, the history of viruses, virus protection, current threats, logic bombs, and more than you ever thought you wanted to know (but need to know) about viruses, and keeping your computer safe.
Never again will you find yourself hard up for an answer to the question, “Just what is a virus, anyway?” when you’re queried by a friend. Read on.
New Versions of Necessary Software — Download ’Em Now


CNET-5-STARS

There’s a new version of Ad-Aware that was made available to the public just yesterday. As was the case with the previous edition of Lavasoft’s Ad-Aware, the new Ad-Aware 1.02 SE Personal Edition scans and cleans your computer’s RAM, registry, hard drives, and external storage devices for known data-mining, advertising, and tracking components, allowing you to maintain a higher degree of privacy while you surf the Web.
The new Ad-Aware 1.02 SE Personal Edition provides advanced protection from known Trojans, Dialers, Malware, Browser hijackers, as well as tracking components, taking the fight against Spyware to the next level. If you haven’t downloaded and installed Spybot 1.3 (the latest version) you’ll want to do that, as well. And, while you’re at it, you might as well download and install the latest version (2.3.8) of McAfee Stinger.
Windows XP Service Pack 2 Only Days Away


WINDOWS-XP-SP2

Last, but certainly not least this week, the official roll out of Windows XP Service Pack 2 has begun, creating fear and trepidation among the computer cognoscenti.
Microsoft released Windows XP SP2 to original equipment manufacturers last Friday and released the network installation version of SP2 on the Microsoft Download Center on Monday. The consumer download will be available via Windows Update within days, according to a Microsoft spokesman.

“There’s buzz out there about it,” says Roger Moffat, senior director of product marketing for ASAP Software. “This is the biggest and most significant OS upgrade before Longhorn, so the customer might view this as a major stepping stone.”


Advice, Be Safe Not Sorry: DO NOT download SP 2 until you’ve performed a complete backup of your important files (e-mail, photos, browser favourites / bookmarks, your entire My Documents folder, and any other precious data on your computer that you would not want to lose).
Later in the week, VanRamblings will publish a full column on Windows XP Service Pack 2. In the meantime, surf safe.

Remember Abu Ghraib? You May, But The Media Seems Not To.

Politics

REMEMBER-ABU-GHRAIB

The abuse of Iraqi child prisoners continues to go unreported in the U.S. press

Why has the media slacked off in covering the Iraqi prison abuse scandal?
Until the first important story by Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker, along with the first wave of pictures from CBS and the Washington Post, journalists across North America had reported almost nothing on the abuse of prisoners at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib detention centre. An American Journalism Review report lists several possible reasons for the failure: lack of resources, the difficulties of reporting in Iraq, reporters worried about ‘liberal media’ charges, and stonewalling by the White House.
For whatever reason, major media failed to put the pieces together.
Now, three months after the story of the torture and abuse of Iraqi prisoners began being widely reported in the U.S. media, the story has all but disappeared from coverage in the major print media and on the national evening news programmes. Mother Jones’ Bradford Plumer asks, “How long will this new stretch of silence last?”
The question becomes particularly cogent when one considers the revelations of abuse that have continued to come to light in the past month. Across the Atlantic, Scotland’s Sunday Herald recently discovered that there are up to 107 child prisoners being held in Iraq (reported earlier by VanRamblings), according to a UNICEF report not yet made public.
In the United States, Rolling Stone magazine got its hands on the classified annexes to the prison report by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba. The annexes accuse high-ranking military officials of setting conditions for torture in Abu Ghraib. In particular, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, who currently runs all of the prisons in Iraq, was sent to Abu Ghraib in order to speed up the intelligence-gathering process. Miller recommended that the jailers should become “actively engaged in setting the conditions for successful exploitation of the internees.” The end result was entirely predictable:

A former Army intelligence officer (told) Rolling Stone that the intent of Miller’s report was clear to everyone involved: “It means treat the detainees like shit until they will sell their mother for a blanket, some food without bugs in it and some sleep.”


The Rolling Stone story is disturbing, not least because of the recent admission by senior Army criminal investigators that the abused inmates had “little or no intelligence value to the United States.”
With so many stories that need reporting, particularly in a Presidential election year down south, where is our media, both in the United States and Canada, when it comes to reporting these very important stories to the public? As Mother Jones avers, “we shouldn’t have to rely on a Scottish newspaper and a music magazine to get the inside dirt on child torture.” Media complicity in prisoner torture must end. Reporters need to wake up.