The Swamp Thing series that ran on USA Networks from 1990-1993 has finally been released on DVD. Note that even though the title is “Swamp Thing: The Series”, this is actually only the first two seasons. I was always a fan of the show, but then again I regularly re-watch Lidsville, so YMMV.
Month: January 2008
DC Universe Classics Info Archive
Mattel’s DC-related action figures have been easily the best figure line available from retails stores over the past several years. DCUC.info is a weblog dedicate to the recently released DC Universe Classics, which have some very nice sculpts.
I grabbed all of Wave 1 from the local department store a few weeks ago, but am really looking forward to Wave 2 and this Gorilla Grod build-a-figure,
There’s just something about talking apes . . .
Spider-Man The Musical? Please, Don’t Go There
The other day I ran across a blurb about rumored casting for a musical version of Spider-Man. At first I assumed it was an Entourage-style joke, but apparently it’s not. Playbill had an item back in April 2007 about the production,
As previously reported, Julie Taymor will direct the forthcoming musical version of the Marvel Comics hero with music provided by Bono and The Edge of the band U2. According to the notice, Glen Berger — playwright of Underneath The Lintel and The Wooden Breeks — will join Taymor on the book. (Neil Jordan — of “The Crying Game” fame — had previously been attached.) Taymor consistent collaborator Matthias “Teese” Gohl (“Across The Universe,” “Frida,” “Titus”) will serve as musical supervisor.
The comic giant Marvel Entertainment will share producing credits with Hello Entertainment/David Garfinkle and Martin McCallum.
I’m still crossing my fingers that this is some elaborate hoax. If it’s real, the best thing that could happen to this production can be summed up in two words — Hulk, Smash!
Diamond Select Launches Line of Planet of the Apes Mego Reproductions
Diamond Select’s line of Mego Star Trek reproductions was apparently so successful that they’re launching a line of Planet of the Apes reproduction as well. Like the Star Trek line, these use the same sculpts as the original Mego line.
The first figures to be released are Cornelius and the generic Soldier Ape. These are $18.99 each and should be out in June 2008.
This Is Zeldaaa!
This t-shirt from Pegasus Publishing is hands-down the best “300” nerdy parody I’ve seen yet.
SmugMug Lives Up to Its Name
Philipp Lenssen of Google Blogoscoped created a mini-storm this week when he discovered a major security hole in the way photo-sharing site SmugMug.Com implements its privacy settings for photos people have uploaded to the site. Unfortunately, SmugMug’s reaction so far has been very…well…smug.
People who post photos on SmugMug want to be able to share their photos with friends but not necessarily share them with the entire Internet. Moreover, they don’t necessarily want to have their friends to know a username, password, etc. So SmugMug has a “privacy” setting which doesn’t require a password but does require someone to have the exact URL to the photo being shared.
This is not a bad idea, especially if done with a Globally Unique Identifier. With a GUID, each photo would have an arbitrary identifier in the URL that would be very difficult to guess or brute force. But, as SmugMug’s CEO confesses, they didn’t know what GUIDs were when they first started SmugMug, so they didn’t use them.
Instead, SmugMug uses the incredibly stupid system of simply starting at 1 and incrementing up for all its photos and galleries in the form
http://smugmug.com/gallery/1000
http://smugmug.com/gallery/1001
…meaning it is trivial to write a script to crawl the site and easily view any and all “private” photos on the site. According to Jensen, there are other security problems that make it possible to view even some password-protected photos and galleries at SmugMug.com
SmugMug’s response is basically a) users of SmugMug aren’t complaining yet, b) implementing GUIDs would be expensive at this point, and c) using this method you can’t get at specific photos.
I’m not surprised that SmugMug users aren’t complaining yet, but I wonder how happy they’d be if they knew that, say, that “private” photo taken in a hotel room posing with lingerie is easily downloadable by anyone with enough patience (and most users seem to have their names on their galleries, so it wouldn’t be too difficult to download all of John Doe’s embarrassing pictures and then post them elsewhere on the Internet and associate the pictures with the individual who posted them). And all this from a site that trumpets it is “Safe and secure” on its front page pitch.
Definitely a service to avoid.