pop-culture for the people

“If Chuck Norris is late, time better slow the fuck down.”

“Chuck Norris doesn’t read books. He stares them down until he gets the information he wants.”

These are just some of the things Chuck Norris is known for.  He’s a world champion Karate expert, Air Force Air Policeman, 80’s action movie star, fake Texas Ranger, internet meme and homophobic card-carrying-NRA intelligent design loving douchebag.  He was also the hero in a little known and little remembered 80’s videogame called Chuck Norris Superkicks.

Long before Mike Tyson was attached to Punchout!!  Chuck Norris was featured in Chuck Norris Superkicks.  It was 1983, the height of Norris’ action movie career just before The Delta Force came out.  You played Chuck on an epic quest to rescue a monk held hostage in an ancient monastery by an evil cabal of ninjas whom you you must save before time runs out or else you both die.  During his quest you acquire fighting skills in the form of belts starting out as a white belt and ending up as a black belt (signified by the color of the bottom of your screen.).

Given you have a mere 6 minutes to go from a white belt to black belt and defeat the ninjas it’s not entirely clear who exactly who administers the belt distribution so we are left to assume Chuck Norris is also a skilled textile worker.  Probably something he picked up during his time in Korea.

Your quest begins on a dirt path heading into the hills towards the monastery.  Along the way you will fight various bandits and ronin intent on stopping you or at least slowing you down.  Everything sounds great so far, right?  Well not so much.  The story line, befitting early Steven Seagal films (before he went environmental), is about the only thing good about this “game”.

On the road you often have to choose between two paths, one is right and the other is wrong adding to your overall time to defeat the end boss.  There is no hint of the proper path, just a roll of the dice.  Over and over you will select the wrong path on your quest only having to backtrack (Steven Seagal would probably get all Zen right about now).  It is the videogame equivalent of having to stop at every redlight in a racing game.

In addition to the various belts you will need to acquire the patience of Jane Goodall teaching a retarded chimpanzee how to get the jellybeans.  The controls are absolutely awful and take a great deal of time to get used to.  There is a noticeable lag in response leaving you to look like you are playing one of those drunk-driving simulators you see at the state fair.  The horrible controls and seemingly random chance assigned when you actually hit an opponent make this game frustratingly difficult.  Eventually you learn to compensate but even then the collision detection is iffy at best and your frustration will mount as you get beat on by random jobbers.

You are equipped with four moves thrust kick, punch, block and the somersault superkick.  I’ve seen Chuck Norris do many a roundhouse but I’m not sure I’ve seen him do a somersault superkick in real life.  Unlike many of you reading this I’ve seen more than my fair share of Chuck Norris in real fights.  My stepfather had a huge collection of VHS tapes of his tournament fights.  Nary a somersault superkick in the bunch.

Ronin warriors and Tengu bandits crop up on the way to the monastery.  Get used to nut shots because these guys will make you suffer enough to make even the most virile of men sterile (except of course Chuck Norris who can apparently drop testicles like nobodies business).  I’m thinking the ninja cabal was feeling the effects of 80’s trickle-down economics in their security funding for such uninspired planning.

After passing the Goemon guards who simply annoy you with Chinese throwing stars at the entrance of monastery you finally get to fight some real live ninjas.  The first wave sort of swarm at you and waste your time.  After beating them the candles go out.  Another wave of ninjas use their mystical stealth invisibility attack which is a royal pain to get past.  They are there mainly to run into you and waste your time.  You will come to find wasting time is a running theme in Chuck Norris Superkicks.  If you make it past them you fight a few more waves eventually beating the game (yay).  As per the era there really isn’t an ending per se so don’t expect much.

Summing up, the sound effects are pretty much crap, and no effort to do anything special for the ColecoVision version of the game which was far superior to the Atari 2600, Commodore 64 and VIC-20 versions.  The graphics are adequate.  You’ll either see grass, which by the way slows you down so stay on the path, dirt, mountains or trees and the monastery.  Oh and the occasional squiggly field which I assume are ninja-breeding rice paddies.

The developer, Xonox, wasn’t exactly known for going the extra mile on quality.  In fact they are one of the many low quality Coleco and Atari developers who contributed to the death of the videogame industry in the US, later to be revived by the introduction of the Nintendo Entertainment System.  Like Mike Tyson’s Punchout!! eventually the license ran out for his likeness and it was later re-released as “Kung Fu Superkicks” which was the same exact game without Chuck Norris’s name on it.  By the way it isn’t as rare as Mangia for the 2600 but it’s rare enough that you should hold onto it if you have a copy.

Verdict: This game royally sucks monkey nuts.  I can’t believe I wasted so many hours trying to beat it when I was a kid.  I would happily trade those wasted hours to get roundhouse kicked to the face over and over by Walker Texas Ranger.  It would be more satisfying by far than getting punched in the nuts by a Ronin warrior.

PROTIP:  Eating lead paint and following it with a chaser of gasoline is probably a better use of your time.

Links:
MobyGames
Official Manual

-Hollywood

I’ve been following the TippingPoint Pwn2Own contest for the last couple of years.  Last year a researcher from ISE named Charlie Miller used an exploit in a Perl library included in WebKit, the base code for Apple’s Safari browser and won a cash price for his effort.  In the press it was claimed he “hacked Safari in mere seconds”.  In truth it took a lot more time than that to devise the exploit and only seconds to execute it.

This year he did it again with another preplanned exploit which he says he discovered while researching last years bug.  Again he won a cash prize of $10,000.  And again it was claimed that Safari is exploited in seconds.

In an interview with ZDNet he said: “I never give up free bugs. I have a new campaign. It’s called NO MORE FREE BUGS. Vulnerabilities have a market value so it makes no sense to work hard to find a bug, write an exploit and then give it away,” Miller told ZDNet. “Apple pays people to do the same job so we know there’s value to this work.”

I have a major problem with his philosophy and feel this is a dangerous precedent to set and a bastardization of the goals of security in the fist place.  I feel he has an obligation to inform Apple and not dangle a dollar amount for the how-to.

Sure he should be paid for his time and effort which is why he works at a security firm.  This contest is basically bonus money and about bragging rights.  Sitting on a bug puts the safety of other users at risk.  But he is basically demanding bribe money for bugs. Who is to say he wouldn’t give up his research to the highest bidder? I’m sure there are blackhat groups like those in Russia and China that would pay handsomely for some juicy exploits like this.

Yes there is a long history of security firms hiring hackers and there have been many questions of whether that is a good idea.  But security firms should take notice of this philosophy and not employee those who engage in this kind of behavior. It’s bad form for his employer and makes the security industry as a whole look bad by proxy. Would you hire a security company that employees hackers who blackmail for bugs to work on your systems?  If we hired his firm while I was working IT at a large New York bank I would advised my boss to make sure he’s not on our project (and perhaps hire an entirely different firm altogether).

I’ve been in a discussion with other users about this.  There seems to be a split in viewpoint, one side saying he should let Apple and the WebKit developers know about this exploit for the betterment of everyone (for free).  The other side feels this is purely about capitalism and he has no moral or ethical obligation to tell anyone.

Some have likened it to seeing a crack in a bridge that might fail.  Are you obligated to inform someone of the problem?  What if Dan Kaminsky demanded $1 million (Dr. Evil laugh) to divulge details on the DNS BIND problem?  People would be after his head and his career would be over.  This isn’t about capitalism vs. communism as some have suggested.  It is about right and wrong.  Charlie Miller is on the wrong side of this equation.

-Hollywood

I’ve been a user of Twitter for some time now and I’ve come to an unfortunate conclusion.  Unless you are Britney Spears Twitter is mostly useless.

Twitter is currently the most popular of a series of micro-blogging and social networking services.  What you get when you sign up for your free account is the ability to send and receive short (140 character long) messages to and from your list of “friends”.  You can “follow” other people, meaning you will receive any messages they post.  In essence it is a web version of SMS text messaging on your cell phone (and in fact can direct messages to cell phones).

Twitter first gained a lot of popularity amongst tech-heads and has since gotten a lot of press from big name tech journalists who have touted its use.  Most of these tech journalists have used the service as a secondary method of drumming up interest in their stories.  Interestingly the service has seen a shift in interest to more mainstream media and even many big name celebrities from the initial technorati as it has grown.  Yes even Britney Spears has a Twitter account.  Many big name corporations like Comcast and Carls, Jr. are exploring the use of the Twitterverse as an alternative method of communicating with their customers.  Twitter is now so mainstream it is being mentioned on the evening news and as I write this very sentence Jon Stewart just mentioned “tweeting” on the Daily Show.  Big name Twitterers even compare their stats to see who has the most followers, a sort of nerdy pissing contest.

Those who think they are getting closer to celebrity Twitterer need to realize that, like television, it is a one way street, a cheap communication channel for them to reach (advertise) to their fans.  Just don’t expect much.  Most of the big name Twitter users simply aren’t listening to your tweets.  Unless you have a number of friends who use the service you are likely writing short messages into a black hole.

For most people there isn’t much of a reason for anyone else to read your tweets unless you are a content producer of some kind.  Face it, nobody but close family is interested in what you just ate or that you are at home petting your dog.  You would be better served by sending a text message on your phone to your friends or use a service like Facebook instead (which most of your friends probably are using anyway).

Currently there is a deluge of good blogging and social networking services.  Twitter, like Facebook, has discovered that the two often go hand in hand.  This is probably part of the reason why Facebook is currently interested in purchasing Twitter.  The problem with so many choices right now is that people are likely to pick one and stick with it unless a majority of their friends leave.  It is simply too much effort for most people to use more than one service at a time.  This is why you saw a mass exodus of Livejournal to Friendster to MySpace to Facebook and Twitter.  But Twitter is (currently) too limited in its capabilities when compared to Facebook.  Twitter is like Facebook in that it has all the same features except the useful ones like hosting photos and videos, and creating and being part of groups.  If sharing information is the point of social networks then Twitter is the stingiest of the bunch.  Perhaps thats why celebrities and corporations like it so much.

I have strong doubts about the long term future of Twitter in its current form.  Though it is still receiving rounds of venture capitol funding it hasn’t made a single dime making any money right now nor has it announced any business plans.  I fear that once the venture capitolists realize there isn’t a business plan at all they will pull their money out.  Twitter’s popularity will ultimately being its downfall as bandwidth and server costs will quickly swallow their remaining funds.

UPDATE: This cartoon perfectly sums up my feelings about Twitter.

-Hollywood