Capri-Sun - like hope in a silver sachet

[alexsarll]

Technically adept types: would it theoretically be possible to make an Oyster card virus?

When I first saw that Virgin 1 was on Freeview, I was mainly excited about The Riches. Then I saw a trailer, and...I'm meant to take that accent of Eddie Izzard's seriously? Like I am Hugh Laurie's in House? There's no punchline? Yeah, maybe not. If I couldn't bear My Fair Lady or The Lady From Shanghai, no way can I take it in an ongoing series. So then I was excited about Battlestar Galactica until I realised it was the crappy original, and while I'd love to see Boston Legal, they've scheduled it against The Sopranos. But just before I dismissed this new channel as a bust, I remembered why I was recognising the name The Unit. It's the collaboration between Shawn "The Shield" Ryan and David Mamet about a US covert ops group (I would say Delta Force except these guys appear to be competent, so maybe think of them just as a US SAS), starring President Palmer from 24 as the operational commander and the T-1000 running things back at base. Tense and manly decisions are made, and stuff blows up. The other plot strand is basically Desperate Housewives except not achingly sh1t, with the unit's wives attempting to maintain both a semblance of normal domestic life, and the pretence that their husbands are in some boring logistics division and certainly not off about to get themselves killed in deniable ops behind enemy lines.
It is on Wednesday evenings. Thus far I have only seen one episode (the second of the first series), but I strongly recommend it.

Phonogram readers and the more-or-less sane will note that everyone interviewed in this piece about the Britpop revival is one of the era's war criminals. Why aren't Menswear touring? Why wasn't the return of Marion met with this sort of mainstream coverage?
(Still, even reading a Northern Uproar interview in 2007 can't be as sure a sign of the End Times as a really rather witty piece appearing in Observer Woman magazine)

Am more excited about Black Plastic later than I've been about a club in a while. I think it helps that this month's cover is the front of John Foxx's Metamatic, an album I somehow only discovered this month.

Comments

[intermix.livejournal.com]

Whee Black Plastic love! See you later. x x x

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Yay! I shall be attempting not to get too drunk at hoshuteki's beforehand, but offer no guarantees.

return of the bands that were never even cool at the time

[charleston.livejournal.com]

I love the way in that article is says that Shed Seven "quietly got back together in February" and started booking small venues... when it's been something of a standing joke for the past 10 years that at least once a year you'll come across a "secret" Shed Seven revival gig in a pub in Camden with about 10 punters...

[guntrip.livejournal.com]

haha, i've heard this from other people as well actually..

my favourite was the way that the tour ads listed the members of the band as if it was the "classic" lineup and someone would care that the original drummer was back.

Re: return of the bands that were never even cool at the time

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Well, quite. Though the worst thing in the article - and I know I'm not the only person riled by this - was the dismissal at the end of a possible market for Sleeper or Echobelly's return. Sure, Sleeper only had three good songs and Echobelly were mostly atrocious after the first album - but that's still a lot more than can be said for Shed sodding Seven.

Re: return of the bands that were never even cool at the time

[myfirstkitchen.livejournal.com]

Never mind that, they've been touring up here properly for years, playing university sized venues and selling them out, just choosing the towns they played carefully. They only stopped about three years ago, because Rick got chippy that nobody was taking his solo project/band seriously. Woo, they got the original guitarist back. Big deal.

[guntrip.livejournal.com]

there's a new northern uproar album coming out as well. i've been told it's a friend-of-a-friend doing it and he's sinking thousands of pounds into it because he loves them so much. terrifying..

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Unless the world goes completely crazy and it's a hit, this is a happy story - NORTHERN UPROAR FAN LOSES LOADS OF MONEY. Anyway, he'd only have spent it on Argos bling otherwise.

[oneofthose.livejournal.com]

That Virgin 1 homepage features the text:

"Virgin 1 launches this Autumn with an hour-long documentary on the Great British penis."

I don't think that's a very nice way to speak about Richard Branson.
Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Oh.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

V.good!

Yeah, I can see why they might want to make dross like that, but I am slightly puzzled that it was flagged as part of their big launch schedule over stuff like The Unit.

[p-dan-tic.livejournal.com]

osyster cards are magnetic so there's no place you could put code in for a virus - if that's what you're asking

[perfectlyvague.livejournal.com]

What if you uploaded it via a fridge door?

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Sort of. I think I was considering it all too abstractly, just in terms of information rather than the actual technology. Thanks.

[baphomette.livejournal.com]

You know, Rick Witter turned up at the Marion gig in Bath. He loitered in the bar for ages looking really cross that no-one had gone up to him and cried "Oh my god, you're Rick Witter from my favouritest ever band Shed Seven! Please do me on the pool table?". Stupid bloody Rick Witter.

Why aren't Menswe@r touring? That would be marvellous. (Note to self, must find an MLS ticket for Dec...)

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

It's not sold out, has it? I've been being disorganised about that too.

Ah, good old Witter (by which obviously I mean the opposite). Have I ever told you about the time I saw Louise Wener coming out of Muji? She was even worse, you could tell from her sour expression that she desperately wanted someone to come up to her and say 'Aren't you..?' so that she could act all tired of being recognised everywhere. As if. So obviously, I ignored her totally.

[butterflycaught.livejournal.com]

I watched the first episode of The Riches the other day and was also highly distracted by Eddie Izzard's accent. It was exactly the same as the one he uses in his shows when he's pretending to be American for comedic effect so I kept expecting him to tell a random story or say something funny. And he didn't. It just didn't feel right. Not sure that I'll be watching the rest of the series - I found it a bit of a trial overall.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

This was exactly my problem with House - I kept expecting Stephen Fry to storm in and the pair of them to start yelling "DAMMIT!". I'm glad it's not just me.

[kendall-lacey.livejournal.com]

The Menswe@r reunion was ruined by the inexplicable success of Bloc Party, making Simon White a busy promoter, rather than an awesome pop star.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Yet another reason to hope Kele does the decent thing and puts himself out of our misery.

[amuchmoreexotic.livejournal.com]

Oyster cards have a chip which does apparently store a small amount of data including your balance or ticket. It has to work like that, because you couldn't instantly look up the balance associated with a given card in a central database at every transaction - especially on a bus with no data link available - so what happens is that they periodically check that your balance matches up with the transactions on record.

Presumably if your balance suddenly shoots up 20 quid with no associated payment transaction, they will realise and ban your card.

If the readers were badly programmed enough, you could fill an Oyster chip with nonsense data and crash the reader. In theory you could try to trick the readers into running code you had put on the Oyster chip (which is what this cartoon (http://xkcd.com/327/) is on about). I doubt there would be enough space on the 1Kbyte Oyster chip to store anywhere near enough code to reprogram the terminal and make it "evil", though.

However, since other companies are making Oyster cards (e.g. that Pulse credit card), they might conceivably use a bigger chip (because it served a dual purpose) and give you more room to store evil code. Even then you couldn't really make a virus because there wouldn't be enough room to store the evil code on normal Oyster cards. You could conceivably have the reader put a reader-crashing nonsense value onto normal Oyster cards, or blank their balance.

The people designing the system would have to be naive to let any of this happen.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Which wouldn't be a first in a major project of this sort but yeah, I take your point, it would need real dedication on the hacker's part and utter cluelessness on the system's. I think it must have been Charles Stross' Glasshouse which got me thinking about this, because what you describe there sounds very like the book's Curious Yellow virus.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I think the title 'Good Enough' really summed them up, except it would have been even clearer if they'd called it 'Will This Do?'

[darkship.livejournal.com]

Just the hits, every night, and it will be fantastic," says the singer from Shed Seven. I beg to differ.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I did see them live once (for review purposes). Like wading through mud, obviously, but anyway, it was circa the album with 'she left me on Friday and ruined my weekend' on. That had been the lead single - and was the only new song they played. Now that's a rare commitment to being utterly unchallenging.

[blanche-carte.livejournal.com]

"... as a really rather witty piece appearing in Observer Woman magazine)" Really?
Was deeply sceptical. Long ago gave up on it unless, for some odd reason, I wanted to be really irritated - and further disappointed with what the meedja thinks women want to read.
But yes - so it is!
Not sure what's with Nigella & the Twiglets (have I been away from telly-land too long?) but the first two pieces are ace.

I briefly contemplated Black Plastic, what with it being practically just down the road. But an average of 3 hours' sleep over the preceding three nights intervened , and it was going to be much too much. Would rather like to go to the next one tho.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I was mainly reading OMM because I was having trouble waking up one morning and thought some bile might kick-start me...

Next BP is December 8th, if you didn't already know that.