and

FREE!Issue 2, August 2012

Rafael Garcia-Irvine on the vulnerabilityof your online existence - Page 5

PLUS ROAD CLOSED: Jamie Bellinger on working on the security team for the Olympic cycle road races. Page 4

Olympics Special

How MusicMakes You Feel

Jade McCann, Page 7

Trust: Fiction or Reality? Mike Flaws, Page 6

Aaron Cook: World Number 1, but not good enough for Team GB? Page 3

Issue 2 (August 2012)

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Spotlight

Editorial

Jamie Bellinger

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India Nunan

RafaelGarcia-Irvine

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Mike Flaws

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Alex Williams

Max Dobson

Andy Sharp

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The Best Of The Best?Alex Williams on the flaws in the Team GB selection process for London 2012.

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Road ClosedJamie Bellinger on working at The Games.

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I Can Guess Your PasswordRafael Garcia-Irvine exposes the vulnerability of your online existence

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Trust: Fiction or Reality?The relationship between director and audience.

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How Music Makes You FeelJade McCann talks about music's effect on emotions.

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Digital vs DiscMax Dobson on the rivalry between gaming formats.

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In this issue ...Editor's Note

So, the Olympics are here. It's a very exciting time for the country, and this month we celebrate the Games with our Olympics special. As well as the usual interesting articles from Raf, Jade, Max and Mike, this issue includes Alex's article on the faults in this year's Team GB selection process, and my own report on working at the Olympic road races and time trials.

If you enjoy reading this issue, join us on Facebook and Twitter above, and spread the word!

Jamie Bellinger

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Alex Williams looks at the !aws in the Team GB selection process,in arguably the most important year for the British team.

The mass hysteria generated within the media over the possibility of Team GB winning a predicted 95 medals, including 27 gold's, is an ambition that may well be realised by the time the closing ceremony ends the London Olympics on August 12th. There is no doubt that Team GB will do the nation proud and will shatter the original target of 48 medals set by UK Sport, with the possibility of podium finishes reaching as far as basketball, double trap shooting and fencing. However, although dubbed as being the best ever British Olympic squad, a number of bemusing selection decisions have undoubtedly prevented an even greater medal haul.

The exclusion of taekwondo world number 1 Aaron Cook (above) from Team GB is arguably the most baffling decision made by the Olympic committee. After feeling uncomfortable at his t h e n p r e s e n t s i t u a t i o n , C o o k l e f t G B Taekwondo's training programme last year to peruse his own coaching and performance regime, having since won gold at the 2012 European Championships and defeating 10 of the top 15 qualified Olympians. Nevertheless, for this very reason, Cook was left out of the Olympic squad in favour of world number 59 Lutalo Muhammad with his subsequent appeal being rejected by the British Olympic Association

along with his right to an arbitrary hearing. This can only suggest that the BOA are deliberately eliminating a British hopeful from the Olympics, denying him the right to compete in front of a home crowd, simply due to the fact that he left the official training programme. Cook felt that the surrounding environment was not conducive for his personal improvement, yet GB Taekwondo is afraid to admit their training programme may not be perfect for all aspiring athletes and are therefore excluding Cook from the Olympics to ensure that he cannot prove, by way of winning a deserved Olympic medal, that there may be other ways to achieve success. This is one of the most obvious cases of 'cutting your nose off to spite your face' that has ever existed within the realms of Olympic selection.

Further examples of selection confusion lie within the women's 800 meter category. Team GB were granted 3 positions in this discipline for the London Olympics, yet have only chosen to enter one competitor, one that has not actually achieved a time quick enough to place them in the class 'A' standard, unlike the 3 other contenders. Lynsey Sharp has been rightfully selected for Team GB after winning the Olympic trials in Birmingham and silver in the European championships this year, however has failed to run an 'A' standard time. This means that her selection has prevented the selection of any 'A' standard athletes, as athletes with the 'B' standard can only be selected if nobody with the 'A' time is chosen. Under this archaic ruling, common sense yet again fails to prevail and the Olympic committee is restricted to the selection of either Sharp or the 3 others, but not a mixture of the two.

I  suspect it is going to be a rather fruitful time for the competing British athletes at this year's Olympics, however, the selection tactics of the various Olympic committees leaves a lot to be desired, leaving out many who will miss out on the once-in-a-generation chance to deservedly compete at their home Olympics. 

@AlexWilliamshk

Alex WilliamsSports Columnist

Spotlight

Editorial

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Sports fan or couch potato, it is difficult not to be swept up by the vast wave of Olympic festivity that has completely taken over our island nation this year. Personally, I am very excited about the Olympics being hosted here in Britain, and I have been very fortunate to be part of the security team in charge of looking after both the mens' and womens' cycle road races, time trials and the marathon. Here's my close-up view of the Games.

Work began on Saturday 28th August, the first day of the London games, when the eyes of the world were on London following the marvellous spectacle of the opening ceremony. After a three-hour coach ride on which I failed to sleep, we arrived on an eerily quiet Fulham Road, gathering for an initial briefing at the entrance of Chelsea and Westminster Hospital. We were issued with our 'Matrix Security' fluorescent jackets, '2012

Marshal' armbands, and radios with earpieces. Everything you need to look important enough to attract unwanted attention from tourists asking for directions. I was then stationed at the corner of Old Brompton Road and Drayton Gardens where I set up cones blocking access to the Drayton area, triggering a neverending torrent of abuse from angry Londonians and cab drivers. We started work at around 2am, so the roads were fairly quiet, but things would soon heat up when rush hour arrived.

After being on duty for a couple of hours, I had become accustomed to drivers pulling in and asking for (or more frequently abusively demanding) an alternative route. Not long after 4am, a silver Audi pulled up at my roadblock and the tinted window on the passenger side slowly rolled down, revealing the driver and a mixed-race man with cornrows in the passenger seat who looked oddly familiar. The driver said that they were trying to cross the river, and I said that Fulham road was shut and they would need to go further down Old Brompton. The passenger then said "Thanks" and they drove away. As I walked over to my bag to get a drink, I suddenly realised who the passenger was. It was the boxer David Haye. I had just given David Haye directions. That put a large smile on my face.

Around 7am, the traffic started to build up and before long I was dealing with rush hour traffic. Having drawn the short straw, I was on the busiest crossroads in our sector, and it wasn't long before I had hundreds of motorists hurling abuse at me every minute. I was at the recieving end of "How the f**k am I supposed to get to work?!", "The Olympics is taking the f**kin' piss", and many more equally colourful expressions of displeasment. At one point during the day, a gentleman pulled up to my cones in his black BMW and his Armani shades (welcome to Chelsea), and stated that he was going through the roadblock. I said that he would need to back up as the road was closed, and he simply said "No, I know my rights and I am

Jamie Bellnger on working at the Olympic Games

@JamieBellinger

Jamie BellingerEditor & Columnist

Monitoring the crowds on Fulham Road

going to go through and park over there". As he drove off, I shouted "I can radio the Police if I need to", at which point he stopped, turned around, and drove off looking satisfyingly defeated.

The rest of the weekend is something of a blur, a side effect of working for over 40 hours with less than one hour of sleep. However, I returned to work on Wednesday, this time at the men's cycle time trials in the small town of West Molesey near Hampton Court. This was a much quieter day, with very little traffic to deal with, but still threw up some issues. We arrived at around 3am once again, and set up roadblocks in the area. The day went slowly, as we were mostly sitting around doing very little, the only major issue being a missing eight-year-old boy, who was quickly found and returned to his parents. However, the excitement all started when the race began.

Having been posted on a road block away from the track, we were ordered to move up to the race road during the trials for additional crowd control support. The fences had a surprisingly thick lining of people for such a small town, and there was a great buzz among the people, who knew that Bradley Wiggins was in with a good chance of the gold medal. At 2.15, the first athlete set off, and came hurtling past us at around 50mph. The cyclists came at 90-second intervals, and our job was to patrol up and down, keeping an eye on the crowds and looking out for any suspicious behaviour.

Around half way through the stage, shortly after the Japanese rider had passed, there was a loud shout down my earpiece: "Man on the FoP, man on the FoP! Get him out of there!". The FoP (Field of Play) is the technical name for the race road, and a drunken homeless man had found his way over the fence and onto it. This was a serious problem. Immediately, all of the security staff in the area, including myself, sprinted across the track to the position of the breach and shouted at the man to get to the side immediately. He stumbled across, and about six of us managed to pull him over the fence, just as the cheering started to escalate on the corner down the road. The next rider was coming, and it had been close, but all was safe. Within a few seconds, a couple of police officers had turned up, and took the man away down a side-road to their car.

After that panic, the rest of the afternoon went very smoothly. The sun was out, and all of West Molesey had turned out to enjoy the Olympic spirit. Of course, all eyes were on Bradley Wiggins, who would be the penultimate rider to come past. When the time came, cameras came out of pockets left, right and centre. Everyone was silent with anticipation, and then there was a crescendo of cheers from around the corner. He was close.

A siren wooped, and the escorting police bike appeared, waving to the excited crowds. To my left, a young boy and girl were running around shouting "nee-nor, nee-nor", while their parents joined everyone else in staring anxiously down the track. The cheers built louder and louder, and then the shiny red helmet of Wiggins appeared. He was going at an incredible pace, even on this level ground, and as he came closer the crowds went completely mad. Flags were waving everywhere, people were whistling and sounding horns, and after the weekend of stress and anger in the city centre, it was fantastic to see such united excitement and pride in our nation, among this small community.

Wiggins sailed past, and then it was all over. The crowds slowly dispersed, and we returned to our roadblock position, where we spent the rest of the far-from-hectic day. I will be back in the capital on the next two Sundays for the marathons, and can't wait. The shifts are long, and the work is stressful at times, but it's hard to explain how fantastic it feels to be a part of the huge and incredibly complex human machine that is making the Olympic Games run the way it should.

Follow @JamieBellinger on Twitter

Editorial

Bradley Wiggins, en-route to a gold medal

Road Closed, Jamie Bellinger (Continued)

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Rafael Garcia-Irvine on the vulnerability of your online existence

"To be, or not to be, that is the question” - Google Inc.

I was sitting on the tube from Piccadilly to Waterloo when a rather strange advert caught my eye. The advert in question was one Google's recent 'Good to know' adverts, targeted at the members of the community who are not so computer literate, and have quit their day jobs in anticipation of the funds waiting for them in Nigeria.The thing that I thought peculiar wasn't Google's blatant plagiarism of arguably Shakespeare's most famous quote, but their suggestion of using it as a 'secure' password. Not even the full line though; a s i m p l e r ' 2 b o n 2 b t i t q ' . O k a y, a d m i t t e d l y 'howsecureismypassword.net' says that it would take the average computer 169 days to crack, but due to the phrase's common usage and fame it becomes a relatively simple password to guess, and is most likely in a number of password databases people use to crack. I am even willing to put money on people changing their passwords to exactly that after reading the advert.

As computer users, most people are aware that passwords and other such security is an important part of keeping yourself protected; both in the real world and in cyberspace. So why are Google, a company that is aware of how important data protection really is, encouraging people to make poor decisions in regards to their own passwords, putting their private data, and ultimately their lives, in jeopardy?

After mulling the prospect of a large proportion of people using insecure passwords to protect some of their most private data, I decided to complete some further research into passwords and not a lot shocked me. Amongst the 25 most commonly used passwords were 'abc123', 'football', 'letmein' and the most generic of them all, 'password'.To show how common some passwords are, a sample of 160,000 leaked LinkedIn members' passwords show that 435 passwords were simply '1234'. Now that may not seem a lot, but that's 0.3% of a sample of 6.5 million users, meaning that about 195,000 LinkedIn users use '1234' as their way of accessing the site.

Another security problem is password reuse. Once again, I am willing to bet that you don't have a password for every different account, or for every different site you use. There are many sites which store your passwords in plain text – this being a goldmine of personal information. Using a few Google keywords and the right knowledge will grant a hacker access to a database of thousands of users' passwords with ease, which are most likely reused on other sites, such as Facebook accounts, Email accounts, or in some cases, even bank and PayPal accounts, all having the same password for immediate access.Since the internet became public about twenty years ago, people have been trained to use passwords that are hard to remember, but easy for a computer to guess (as brought to light by Randall Munroe, creator of popular web comic xkcd). The formula

@Xeqache

Rafael Garcia-IrvineTechnology Columnist

Characters Used In Passwords

generally is as follows: take a common word, like 'sarcasm'. Swap some of the letters for numbers, add a bit of punctuation at the end, and voilà, 'S4rca5m&' appears to be a secure password. Truth be told it's not – the numerical substitutions are common and the punctuation isn't hard for a computer to guess, either. Using a piece of freeware called ophcrack, I set my password to exactly this and used my everyday laptop computer to chew through and crack the password. It only took my computer an hour or so to crack, and the password 'pepsi7', a password that has a common structure, took less than seven minutes. Someone dedicated to stealing your passwords, or your bank details would most likely invest a lot more time and money.It's more than likely that if you're reading this, then at least one of your passwords follows a structure that I have described. So what can you do? Well, the obvious answer is to change the offending passwords. Take four words, chosen at random and put them together. And that's it. No adding in numbers to make them more secure, no adding punctuation just so it looks harder to crack. T h e t r u t h i s , s o m e p a s s w o r d s l i k e 'FlickAwesomeMagazineDownload' will take the average computer more time to crack than the universe has even existed. With or without the capitals. As a password, it has all the requirements that are really needed. Secure, and easy to remember. I bet you've already memorised it.

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Did you Know?

- A pet's name appears in people's passwords three times as often as any other family member

- The average time a user will maintain the same password for is 31 months.

- The average internet user has 25 online accounts.

- The average password length is 8 characters.

- The average user has 6-7 different passwords, though 66% of Americans only have one or two.

- 15% of people write their passwords down.

- The most commonly-used passwords are 123456, password, 12345678, abc123 and qwerty.

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I Can Guess Your Password, Rafael Garcia-Irvine (Continued)

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You go to the cinema and submerge yourself into the world of the film, your consciousness becomes within the film and you no longer exist in your own mind. The film presents you with something that you know to not be factual but you accept it, because the people around you accept the film regardless of its inaccuracies; so, on the basis that your only choice is to accept what you are shown, that is what you do. This small conclusion requires, of course, the film to be accepted by the people around you, so let’s presume this is the case. I am talking in particular about “mainstream”, realist cinema – the kind of movies that audiences go to movie theatres en mass to see. Note Blumer’s symbolic interaction theory, whose first principle states that “humans act toward people and things based upon the meanings that they have given to those people or things.” To film we attach trust; that is, trust that the film will represent ourselves most honestly and faithfully. We attach trust to films and so when watching them, we act toward it accordingly, willingly engulfing our consciousness with a fictional ‘reality’.

The rest of the article is about Roland Emmerich. I think you can probably see where this is going; especially if you, like me, recently watched his prehistoric epic “10,000 BC”. I feel that it’s fair, at this point, to question “Independence Day” Emmerich’s philosophy towards the audience-film relationship. Being in the audience of 10,000 BC feels a little like being violated, but just as Christian Grey’s husky growl so compels that young protagonist to submit herself, so too the

sensory bombardment renders us submissive, but where is the trust? Anastasia Steele has the benefit of discussing the violation before it occurs, agreeing on contractual obligations so that when the deed is done, she is not surprised. We, as an audience, on the other hand, while watching a film advertising itself by title as a drama set in 10,000 BC, don’t expect to see some men in ice age Europe walk over a mountain onto Africa, where Woolly Mammoths are helping the Egyptians to build pyramids at least 6,000 years early. I’ll not pick apart the (unusually well spoken, in almost complete English) factual errors made by the film. This is not a critical review of the film. Rather, the question is why Emmerich feels welcome to help himself to two hours of our minds, in which he fills the space with nonsense. Sure, film is an art form and with art comes artistic licence, and in the light of my article for this magazine last month wherein I concluded that films are made to be forgotten, or something along those lines, perhaps I should in fact be congratulating 10,000 Shades of Grey on being so useless and worth forgetting; but the film is not forgettable due to it’s spectacular, epic quality, and so sits in the mind of the audience a long time after viewing, a bitter aftertaste of a drink that was far too sour. Where does Blumer’s principle sit on this, then? I concluded that we need to trust a film to be truthful because that is what we say film means to us when we watch it. Perhaps that is not true, though. Who says that ‘realist’ films have to be ‘realistic’? They are not necessarily related. Of course, one means to be in the style of the other, but the words are not necessarily of the same meaning. Lies often go unnoticed if they are realistic enough, but they by definition don’t dictate the true reality of what occurred. With the exception of the research on Blumer, I’ve written this article completely off-the-cuff. I find that I’ve persuaded myself that I no longer feel angry about the violation I received from 10,000 BC, but instead I’m understanding of Emmerich’s use of artistic licence. On the other hand, an score of 8% on Rotten Tomatos (at time of writing) and fairly common low score critical reviews of the film perhaps suggests that I would be right to side with the public; there is a need for a film to not betray the trust of an audience. Emmerich has much to answer for.

Trust: Fiction or Reality?Mike Flaws discusses the relationship between director and audience

Steven Strait in 10000BC

@MikeFlaws

Mike FlawsFilm Columnist

It took me a while to choose this month's topic, because music is such a big thing for me that there's so much I could talk about. Although, the other day something happened to me and I have to share it with you. The excitement is killing me. I wouldn't be Irish if I didn't have a story for you, so here we go!Recently, I was scrolling down through my news feed on Facebook and I saw a status that actually made a little bit of sense to me, considering that usually it's people moaning about their dead grandad's dog or something. That status was:

Music has the ability to changemy mood no matter how I feel.

There was no way I could have agreed more, but at the same time I think that only a certain song can do so much for anybody. However, I did hit like with such determination it scared me a little. After recovering from my excitement I decided to put this idea into practice, and everytime I heard or listened to a song I asked myself 'How does that make me feel?', almost as if I was counselling myself. So now, for you little scoundrels reading this magazine, I will give you an account of the monolouge that ran through my mind at that very time.The song that brought me back to the time I read the status was 'Who Am I To Say' by a pretty lady singer called 'Hope'. This song has the ability to c h a n g e m y m o o d n o m a t t e r h o w angry,happy,upset or even normal I feel. I don't exactly want to give you my interpretation of what the song is about because everybody will think it's about something different, and I don't want to spoil that for anybody. The voice of the song has a ghostly tone and everytime I hear it my muscles

almost melt and everything that is flying around my mind (i.e. What I have to do, where I have to be) just dissapears into thin air. After the song it takes at least ten minutes for my mind to function again! To me, the song reminds me of all the times I tried not to fail in relationships. I don't just mean boyfriend/girlfriend relationships, I mean all relationships. The main lyric that catches me everytime is 'Who am I to say you love me? Who am I to say you need me? I don't know anything at all', mainly because no matter what people tell you or no matter what emotions are given or shown in any relationship, there will always be something that's being held back and you will never know how a person truly feels about you. My interpretation could apply to a lot of people, but I highly doubt it will apply to everybody. Everybody will have their own song that does this to them, that means something to them and that has the ability to change their mood no matter how they feel. I would love to hear from you. You can e-mail me on jade@theflickmag.com with your personal story and your chosen song. I recommend listening to this song if you haven't already heard it and I'd love to know how you interperate it as well. Thank you for reading this months article and I hope to hear from some of you very soon!

@JaydaMcCann

Jade McCannMusic Columnist

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@SE_Dresden

For as long as I can remember, Video Games have always been available in a physical copy: People lining up outside stores for midnight releases, Demo Disks that came with magazines promising a taste of the latest shooter or racing simulator, Less-Than-Legal duplicates passed from one friend to another in hushed whispers behind the bike sheds. It has always been there. However, in recent years there has been a sudden up-rise in the sale of video games online, with more and more people pre-ordering a digital version rather than a corporeal one. Is this the fate of the Industry? To be purely Online?

As I type this, it is the height of the Steam Summer Sale: Big titles, and all the games you wanted to get but didn't have the cash for, have had their prices slashed to ridiculous levels. With new deals happening almost every 8 hours, this venture has been a massive boon on Valve's part. I hardly recall a time in the past few days when the number of people online on Steam has been below 3 million. And one doesn't even have to be on the computer to get access to these deals! Accessible through pretty much any form of internet portal, Digital distributors like Steam and, to a lesser extent, EA's Origin service offer a level of convenience simply not afforded to a local retailer. Granted, most notable Video Game stores also have an online counterpart, but these rarely have the library of games that would interest everyone.

And PC isn’t the only culprit: Sales of games on the PSN, XBLA and WiiWare have also skyrocketed in recent years. The ability to simply press a few buttons and have pretty much any Game on the market is something that fits all too well into the lethargic lifestyle of The Gamer. Not to mention services such as On Live, which even emulate a high end console on which to play, only needing an internet connection and a screen. Is this a sign of some dystopian future where people won’t even need a console any more?

Well, that seems a little extreme. As intimidating and looming as digital sales might be, sales of their physical counterparts do equally as well: A report published recently by the NPD, a North American Market Research Company, shows that physical sales still maintain a majority, however slight, of 56% against digital sales. This surely must count for something. Though sales online have slowly been creeping up, in this age of fast internet and loose copyright infringement, getting a CD is still big. And I get the feeling I know why…

There is nothing quite like holding a freshly opened Game box, it harkens back to the halcyon days of Christmas and other gift-giving seasons. Something almost child-like about getting to rip into the packaging to get at that latest release. Not only are there selfish reasons, but also a feeling of kinship with other gamers: Waiting all night in the dark and the cold, halfway down a cue that stretches on as far as the eye can see. Tired, yes. Cold, yes. But Happy. It’s just not an experience you get with a simple click-download. So, for my part, I don’t see physical Games disappearing any time soon.

Max DobsonGaming Columnist

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