How many of us watched the opening ceremony to the Summer Olympics this year? And how many of us thought that the fireworks were pretty spectacular, in spite of all of those fears about air quality in China? Well, there was a reason for the amazing footage. According to Bloomberg, it wasn’t real.

Yes, that’s right. General Electric Co.’s NBC (having spent $894 million for broadcast rights) used some faked computer-generated (CGI) footage to spiff things up, according to MSNBC.

Yes, that’s also right. Bloomberg’s amazing investigative reporting was to simply parrot MSNBC.

But that’s not all. Also amongst the line-up of fakes was the little girl Lin Miaoke who sang “I Sing For My Country.” Because it wasn’t her voice. Originally slated to sing the song was Yang Peiyi. She did a wonderful job of it. How do we know? Because it was her voice that Lin Miaoke lip-synched to. Why did China pull a “Milli Vanilli”? Well, because Lin Miaoke looks cuter.

Wonderful.

But that’s not all. How many of us remember seeing the man who ran the sides of the stadium to light the Olympic Torch? Wasn’t that cool? Hell yes! And how many of us remember seeing him go right past the larger-than-life Blue Screen of Death?

Bill Gates, likely in the audience, probably cringed when he saw the gigantic BSOD from a Windows XP Embedded system crash. Then again, maybe he’s used to it.

All-in-all, the Summer Olympics has not exactly been quite the shining example that China wanted it to be. There has been a lot of disappointment in the world this year. Let’s hope however that this is only in the technical aspect of the Olympics, and that the athletes themselves prove themselves to be as upstanding as we would all expect them to be.

The world is a scary place. The internet is no different. Everyone is out to get you. Everyone wants to hurt you. And they’re always thinking up horrible new methods to do it.

Okay, so yeah, that’s just a tad over the top. No, life isn’t really that bad. But yes, there really are hackers out there in the world trying to be mean and nasty.

Just ask Adobe. What is more internet than Adobe’s Flash providing all sorts of goofy little Flash applets all over the intarweb? Well Symantec has found a weakness in it. An exploited weakness. With at least 20,000 web pages found to carry links to a site that hosts malicious Flash applets that exploit the weakness. Not good. Fortunately, it’s only Adobe’s own Flash Player stand-alone application that is vulnerable. Internet browsers like Internet Explorer, Firefox, et cetera that support Flash plug-ins aren’t vulnerable. They’re safe. Still, not such a great moment for Adobe.

Speaking of the internet, what about one of the biggest ISPs out there, Comcast? Well just a couple days ago, for a mere few hours, Comcast.net was hacked by a couple of losers who redirected the webpage to one with text that read, “KRYOGENIKS Defiant and EBK RoXed COMCAST. sHouTz To VIRUS Warlock elul21 coll1er seven.” Wondrous stuff that. Just the hack of the ages there. Fortunately Comcast fixed everything by Thursday and is working with the police, even if they are stymied.

Still, a hack is a hack, and of all businesses out there to be well protected, you’d have thought one of the great cable ISPs like Comcast.net would have held up better than that. Oh well.

And speaking of ISPs and hacks, let’s jump across the pond to everyone’s favorite BT Home Hub wi-fi internet router, which has yet another security hole. When left on the default settings. You see, to combat stupidity from being a factor in hacking the device, recently the default administrator password from “admin” to the device’s serial number. Each being unique and relatively harder to guess than “admin”, it seemed a fairly intelligent way to go. And since it’s stamped on the device you never have to go far to find where you wrote it down. Except that, according to GNUCitizen, it’s not actually all that difficult to request the serial number from the device over a network connection. Hmm. Not so brilliant then. Just yet another reason to change from the default settings to actually secure ones. Good advice for everyone out there, not just for BT Home Hub owners.

In fact, when was the last time you Windows users patched your bugs and holes? You naughty naughty lot. Automatic Updating should be fixing it for you. If you haven’t turned it off that is. Why do I ask? Well, according to a new study by Akamai, China and the US lead the way for denial of service and exploit traffic in 2008. Yes, that’s right. Exploits. As in your computer has a security hole the size of Texas that was fixed years ago, but because you don’t think updating is worth it, you got hacked and now hackers are sending out traffic from your computer. Goodness knows that the past years have seen a great number of really effective worms, viruses, and Trojans for Windows PCs. All of them with fixes. Have you updated your computer with those fixes? Because in the world of always-on-line high-speed internet, if you’re not part of the solution, you really are part of the problem. Update your PC today. With Windows it’s just as simple as turning on your Automatic Updates. Or clicking on that little Windows Update button. It’s never been easier. Protect yourself. Protect us all. Update your PC. Please!

So yes, hubs, computers, even cell phones can be hacked.

Cell phones?

Yes, that’s right, cell phones.

Such as a bug found in Motorola’s RAZR firmware allows intentionally malformed JPG images to execute whatever code a hacker’s little black heart desires. Fortunately, after a year of working on it, Motorola finally has a fix. Yipee! Way to keep on top of things Motorola!

But all is not lost. It’s a scary scary world, but there are plenty of folks out there finding the security holes. And plenty of people fixing them. Or telling you how to protect yourself from them. It’s a scary place, but we’re here to help. If you let us.

Well, we’ve done it. We actually whipped it out to have a pissing match with China to prove that ours is just as big. (Whipped out an SM-3 missile that is.)

As if no one already knew that.

I mean really. So China has proven they can shoot down satellites. And now we’ve reminded them that so can we. And that has accomplished … what? A not so gentle reminder of the obvious? Bah. Boys and their toys.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for the ability to intercept and destroy high-speed incoming projectiles with SM-3s. It’s nice to know you’re not likely to be nuked even if someone tries. But what did an innocent spy satellite that never worked from the beginning ever do to anyone? Maybe if it had collected some images? Or had technology that worked…

So we’ve officially carried out one of the most expensive skeet shoots ever. Just to remind the world (especially China) that we can. Yipee.

Oh, and “we saved the world from that evil rocket fuel.” Yeah. Because other satellites with the same fuel don’t ever burn up on re-entry. It was just sooooo dangerous. And if you believe that I have a bridge to sell you…

But hey. After Afghanistan and Iraq I guess the United States had to prove we could do something right. We can shoot down anything! Be it in a jungle, or on the plains, or even in space!

Dubya: Just don’t hide in a cave. We don’t like caves. They’re all twisty and turny and stuff. And dark. I’m afraid of the dark. Hold me!