#SO MANY SPOILERS DONT READ IF YOU HAVENT SEEN ROGUE ONE

[freebooter4ever]

I WALKED OVER THE BRIDGE THROUGH TWO INCH DEEP SNOW TO SEE STAR WARS and heaven help me I’ve jumped on board so many new sinking ships WHY

First off, SPACE HUSBANDS, I almost started crying in the theater when Chirrut began fighting with his staff (that sounds dirty but no I mean the thing that looked like a bo staff and could also blow stuff up maybe?) because, as much as it pains me to admit it, my brother and mine’s most watched star wars film was Episode One (I KNOW THE HORRIFIC PREQUELS) and mostly because of Darth Maul and his amazing fight sequences due to our own karate background and general obsession with dancelike battle. To see an ASIAN martial artist get to strut his stuff...OMG....I bow down....I can’t even...I got chills. And then, THEN to top it off you have adorable love/hate banter between him and Baze and omg I was on board the ship so fast I think all it took was that ‘you almost shot me’ line and everything was over. I only wish they made use of Chirrut’s jedi style of fighting even more. As amazing as their death sequence was, I reaaaaaaaally wanted more staff spinning action. Although I have to give it up to the writers for managing to make these ex-monk-defenders seem to have eons of camaraderie between them, like they’ve been bff’s forever. I know everyone’s dead and all, but if we could get like...a prequel to this prequel all about these two I would LOVE IT.

Second, Cassian’s lovesick puppy eyes staring at Jyn for the last half of the movie killed me. UTTERLY DESTROYED. And then Cassian and Jyn were utterly destroyed and I cried my eyes out, but I’m now happily on denial island so it’s all good. Seriously, fuck han solo, who cares about that nerf herder, CASSIAN is so much better omg. I honestly didn’t even see their connection until it got to the point where Cassian was all ‘STOP EVERYTHING YOU’RE PUTTING JYN IN DANGER’, even disobeying a direct order and then it clicked. Cassian was falling in looooooooooooove \o/ and he also probably now understood why Jyn was so willing to sacrifice whatever for her dad, since now Cassian had someone to sacrifice whatever for too. \o/ Although I’m still not convinced Jyn felt the same way. But you know, if she doesn’t want Cassian, I’m all for OC creation. \o/

My only complaints (and very small ones) are that, indeed, there was like ZERO women in this. It was weird. It didn’t bother me as much as it should because I’m so used to The Hobbit and LOTR and things, but still. It made me miss the prequels because they did such a good job of including women in the background characters. Like couldn’t ONE rebel pilot have been a woman? ONE? Or some more female aliens that ARENT dancing skimpily in dive bar scenes? And then lastly, the whole forced ‘HOPE!!!!1111##!!’ storyline was a little bit painful and too didactic. Watching Jyn’s stupid speech and argument against the single black woman character involved a lot of cringing and shame for being a white woman. Hard for me to explain the exact weirdness but it felt squicky. Too much white feminism lately, and too many white women supporting the evil orange turnip, INCLUDING the girl that Jyn was painfully obviously patterned after (Katniss, Jennifer Lawrence) for me to buy this bit. The fact that they put the ‘let’s play it safe and not rebel’ side of the speech in a black woman’s mouth....ugh puke. If it had been the opposite, the speech might have been more believable. It was quite obvious that this story had been written by a man.

Beyond all that, my overall impression was damn I wish flying spaceships was as common and accessible as driving cars.

[fail-unsafe]

Dr. Strangelove or: How Single-Point-of-Failure can come in many Shapes and Sizes

One of the films we watched for Security Theatre in my COMP6841 course was Dr Strangelove. Aside from being an entertaining and engaging satirical parody of Cold War era politics, it may also offer some useful insights into single-point-of-failure.

First off, what is a single-point-of-failure?

Single-point-of-failure refers to a particular component of a system which, if compromised/broken, compromises/breaks the whole system.

For example, if the electricity grid was wired in such a way that 1 utility pole collapsing meant power was lost in the entire city, then that utility pole is a single-point-of-failure. If that 1 utility pole is compromised/broken, then the whole electricity infrastructure is compromised/broken. (note that a system can have multiple single-points-of-failure. For instance, if the electricity grid was constructed such that a failure in ANY of the many utility poles would bring down the whole system, then we can say that the system has multiple “single” points of failure (or just say “multiple points of failure”)).

A single-point-of-failure is basically the defining characteristic of a fragile system. Without backups/contingency plans/fail-safes in case any of these components break, a single small problem can bring down the whole system.

So, how does this relate to Dr. Strangelove?

The plot of the film is kick-started by US Air Force general Jack Ripper going rogue and issuing “Wing Attack Plan R“ (basically plan “nuke the Russians”) without the Pentagon’s permission.

“War is too important to be left to politicians. They have neither the time, the training, nor the inclination for strategic thought.” - General Jack D.Ripper

What follows is a chain of events that make it increasingly difficult for the Pentagon to stop the order once its been issued.

They cant communicate via radio with anyone at Ripper���s base because all the radios have been confiscated (per Ripper’s instructions).

They cant radio the bomber planes to abort mission because the planes (following protocol) have switched their radios to accept only messages preceded by a secret 3-letter code that only Ripper knows (i.e. Ripper has basically prevented anyone else from communicating with the bombers).

Ripper has told his own troops on base that the “enemy” (Soviets) may be wearing American uniforms to fool them, prompting his troops to fire on any other troops they don’t recognize.

And when the good guys DO finally storm Ripper’s base (SPOILERS! DONT READ AHEAD IF YOU HAVENT SEEN THE MOVIE!), Ripper has already killed himself, leaving nobody who knows the secret code.

The plot of the whole movie is basically the good-guys trying to reverse Ripper’s command before it’s too late.

We could say that 1 single-point-of-failure in Wing Attack Plan R is Ripper; the rogue commander. There are all these protocols, procedures and safety measures in place to prevent the enemy from thwarting the plan (confiscating/switching radios to prevent the enemy from listening/interfering with their communications), but none of them ever take into account the possibility of the GENERAL being the problem and issuing the order when they’re not supposed to. Too much trust and power was placed in 1 man.

So, how SHOULD the system have been designed in order to prevent such a scenario from happening? One idea that some of you may have already had is to automate the system; take the corruptible and fallible human out of the loop, and let a computer decide when/if to launch the nukes.

But the film goes on to show how even this can represent a single point of failure. When the Pentagon informs the Russian ambassador of the bombers heading their way, he warns them about the Doomsday Machine, the Russian computer system programmed to automatically launch Russia’s nuclear arsenal if the homeland is bombed. And since the Doomsday Machine is DESIGNED to be tamper-proof (so that it can’t be sabotaged/destroyed), there’s no way to disable it!

Ambassador: The Doomsday Machine is designed to trigger itself automatically. President: But surely you can disarm it somehow? Ambassador: No, it’s designed to explode if any attempt is made to un-trigger it!

So now the stakes are even higher; if the bombers reach Russia, not only will they nuke all of Russia, but they’ll trigger the Doomsday Machine, which will nuke the rest of the world.

In this case, the single-point-of-failure is the Doomsday Machine itself. Even IF the machine works flawlessly (no bugs, no false readings, etc), the fact that it is supposed to be tamper-proof means that it too, like the Americans’ Wing Attack Plan R, cant be stopped once started.

So the solution is neither to place all our trust in a single human, nor in a single computer system. Then what IS the solution? Hard to say. It’s hard to identify single-points-of-failure in complex systems. Although it seems to me that the common flaw in both the Americans and Russians’ systems is that there’s no way to undo a course of action once it’s been decided upon; meaning that there’s no way to correct mistakes. So a system should probably be designed with some kill-switch/way to abort a command once it’s been issued (but what is the kill-switch is itself compromised? Then we need backups for the kill-switch. And maybe even backups for the backups. And...)