

Disney sitcom says open source is insecure - ibotty
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/08/20/disney_sitcom_open_source_insecure/

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s_henry_paulson
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

How tech savvy do you expect the writers of a Disney kids show to be?

Incomprehensible technobabble permeates television and movies, but only when
these people accidentally make a sentence that works, is it news.

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ralmeida
This. Once an episode of Criminal Minds had a criminal whose IP started with
300-something. That would be immediately corrected if the writing was
minimally revised by an specific consultant, which suggests it wasn't. So I'm
going with s_henry_paulson and the Hanlon's Razor on this one.

On a side note, isn't the term "freetard" extremely pejorative?

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CrLf
That's probably not an error. It's like phone numbers starting with 555, so
that it isn't accidentally someones' phone.

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ralmeida
That seems a little overzealous for an IP, but indeed I hadn't considered this
possibility.

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bradleyland
It seems overzealous, until you're the one whose IP has been published in a
mainstream media outlet, resulting in bored crackers probing around to see
what's there.

In an age where television shows regularly incorporate "real world" tie-ins
and easter eggs, it makes perfect sense to use an invalid IP address to save
everyone some trouble. Not to mention, if someone were _really_ attacked as a
result of their IP address being randomly used on some television show, the
lawsuit that follows would be unwelcome.

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amirmansour
The open source thing aside. What the hell is up with Disney channel shows!
They don't make them like they used to anymore. Another reason why I don't
watch TV anymore. Life++

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leephillips
There are a crop of current Disney shows that are so awful their creators can
not have souls. There are 6 or 10 of these and they are all the same, with the
same characters and non-jokes covered by an aggressive laughtrack. They
traffic in a kind of nastiness that you might have thought was consigned to
the past, like making fun of foreigners. Somehow, however, the same outfit
brings us the brilliant Phineas & Ferb.

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erez
I'm trying to figure out what's "Open Source code" actually means. Judging
from what little is shown at the video, and without watching any of that
programme, I think the idea here isn't "open source" as in "Free and Open
Source software", but more of "code examples freely available on the net", in
the same vein of someone copying information about a book from the Internet
for school and gets an F with a "No, Lurch and Uncle Fester were not
characters in David Copperfield."

That is not a jab at open source. I don't know how a virus could be inserted
in a code snippet copy/pasted from the web, but I guess that's what the scene
refers to.

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malsme
I once instructed someone to download Open Office and he downloaded an
unofficial version that I guess appeared first on the search engine. It was
bundled with a not-so-nice toolbar, so these things do happen.

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icebraining
It's hardly a problem specific to FOSS, though.

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Tichy
"Disney-owned Pixar recently released some of its production code under an
open source licence."

Then I guess now we know why...

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nivla
Heck you don't even need to go that far. Just look up the headers to
disney.com, they use Apache!!

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jlebrech
they obfuscate technical information for legal reasons, they couldn't have
mentioned the existence of "pirate" software otherwise the kids would be
looking for "pirate" games and other type of software from the back of
watching the show.

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ibotty
that is a good explanation. (still wrong to chose that plot though.)

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darkxanthos
Take a breath, it's gonna be ok. Not news.

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andrewfelix
Ironically some Disney animation studios have switched to Linux/Wine to avoid
paying Windows licensing fees.

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activepeanut
They also believe in Open Source:

<http://www.disneyanimation.com/technology/opensource.html>

~~~
pervycreeper
Not to mention Panda 3D. On another note, time for a code audit, I guess!

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mseepgood
She should have used Free (as in freedom) Software instead.

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m0skit0
That really was a NOOBS mistake, Mr. Nerdy Boy.

