Hee, I doubt this is Joss' fault. It looks a bit like Windows 2000. Yes, I'm a geek.

gossi | September 18, 18:17 CET

The Chinese symbols on the left translate to "danger, lightning/electricity". Just for interest.

non sequitur | September 18, 19:02 CET

Hi-larious!

I take this to indicate that Microsoft continues to exist even in Firefly's day.

Hell, the Blue Sun Corporation is probably run by Bill Gate's head in a jar.

bookrats | September 18, 19:31 CET

He DID say in the commentary that it's Microsoft + Coke. I can see it now - your Coca-Cola can is going to crash and not be able to open properly. Tech support to get your caffeinated goodness?

Anusien | September 18, 19:57 CET

Of course, as Bruce Schneier would say, no computer operating system can effectively protect you from an attacker with physical access to the hardware. Given the difficulty of achieving physical contact with the "scows", the thinking might have been, Why waste time and money on buying, installing, and testing a "modern" OS? Devote those resources to fortifying more accessable targets, like the door locks.

Just slap something ancient, immotile, and juuuust functional in there, and trust the security of the "house" to keep valuable things out of the trash.

I mean there were a lot of moving parts to the plan. They needed to get past the doors, disable the security on the display (remember the laser thingies surrounding the gun), reprogram a scow, retrieve the contents of the scow, and (here's the heart of it) then trust everyone involved not to screw each other over.

Disabling the OS on the scow was hardly the linchpin of it. A prerequisite, of course, but it begins with something even more improbable: that the thieves can trust each other, and work together seamlessly. Defeating an adversary that has trust in each other to execute a detailed and sophisticated plan is extremely difficult, no matter what OS your computers are running.

Which certainly doesn't mean that win2000 isn't an incredibly insecure OS, and that a better OS wouldn't have made things more difficult for the BDH, just that by the time it got to that point, from the vantage point of the security personnel, many, many things have gone very wrong. Whether it took 10 minutes or 15 minutes (or 45 seconds) to compromise the scow isn't going something they're going to spend a lot of time discussing the in the after-action review.

(Secrets and Lies by Bruce Schneier is a great book! Can ya tell I'm in the middle of reading it!)

nemo | September 18, 20:03 CET

nemo, that post scares me. I presume they just forgot to install Powerpoint.

gossi | September 18, 20:09 CET

Well, I'm sitting here at my Windows XP computer drinking a can of Coke and... Oh my God! I'm evil!

(I am using Firefox, does that redeem me?)

zz9 | September 18, 20:31 CET

As I remember it, Joss says that Blue Sun is "basically" MS and Coke merged together. I think this is rather to give a quick view of what is Blue Sun (a big corpo that has the power to run the government), not to be taken litteraly.

Anyway, the real reason behind this, I guess, is that it costed way less money to use such a screen live on stage, rather than build an entire new screen (for something which is nearly invisible on TV - that's not like the screen Kaylee uses in front of Serenity on Persephone, in the pilot, when they have just landed and Mal tells her to find passengers).


Anyway, Joss is right to hate MS! ;)

Long live Linux (OK, I'm leaving now...).

Le Comité | September 18, 20:34 CET

bookrats, that is very funny...

Chris inVirginia | September 18, 20:37 CET

That gave me shivers... what a dark future when your trash collection relies on the clunkiest software ever designed by man. Here's to a stinky future!

Hjermsted | September 19, 00:03 CET

I'm sitting here with my Windows XP Media Center Edition and just lol'ing here. And for all those Mac lovers out there, at least my mouse has two buttons on it. HAHA.

SpikeBad | September 19, 04:43 CET

Well, zz9, guess we can forgive this time. Next time, we're fray you with.....a raw T-bone? Gosh, we're getting so easy here :)

Madhatter | September 19, 06:08 CET

I love it when other people pickup on things like this. Yet another funny or important detail I overlooked. And yet another reason to go watch the whole series again for the gazillionth time!

StaffOSimon | September 19, 06:55 CET

(Joss hates Windows? No more than I do...) It figures MS would still be around 500 years from now. They say cockroaches will be the only things left after an apocalypse, so, one futuristic plague deserves another ;)

And hey, what's wrong with having a one-button mouse? I'm admittedly single-minded in my Whedonism -- why shouldn't my computer be just as focused?

Wiseblood | September 19, 09:45 CET

Mighty Mouse baby... look into it!! :)

Hjermsted | September 19, 09:53 CET

::Is a Mac Owner::

So does mine! NEENER NEENER!

;)

Joss' bitch | September 19, 12:41 CET

Who doesn't hate Windows? As a Windows network administrator I know I do. Too much hassle... Mac's just work.

aftermac | September 19, 17:47 CET