BelchSpeak
I can't believe that came from your mouth!
Reason 47 to HomeSchool: Kids Won’t Eat Drug-Laced Brownies
Jan 27th
Someone brought pot brownies to school in a neighboring county and some kids ate the evidence. So anything with peanuts in it can’t make it through the front door, but drug laced chocolate brownies? That’s fine.
From WTOP here:
The Loudoun County Sheriff’s Department is investigating reports that several students brought “pot brownies” to Farmwell Station Middle School in Ashburn.
Sheriff Mike Chapman said his department was notified about the brownies about 5:45 p.m. Thursday. “We heard about it yesterday, but it apparently happened a day earlier,” Wayde Byard, spokesman for Loudoun County Public Schools, told WTOP.
“We’re still figuring out what happened, since it appears the evidence was eaten by the time we found out.”
Rumors began flying on Facebook and Twitter that students had been expelled.
I remember when they used to teach kids to “Just say no.” That no longer appears to be the case these days. Marijuana use has become a culturally accepted behavior, even in an upscale county like Loudoun Virginia.
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Loading ...X Games Crash: Colton Moore Bites It
Jan 26th
I saw this while I was out tonight at (shocker!) a pub with friends. I’m gonna watch the reruns later on ESPN 3D.
Reminds me of Jake Brown biting it on the skateboard.
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...Symantec to Customers: Only a Fool Would Use PCAnywhere Now
Jan 26th
Symantec released a whitepaper that quickly glosses over that they were pwn3d back in 2006 and lost the source code to their flagship products. Now they are recommending that the software be turned off unless you really, really can’t do without it, but if you get h4x0red don’t blame them.
The whitepaper says:
Upon investigation of the claims made by Anonymous regarding source code disclosure, Symantec believes that the disclosure was the result of a theft of source code that occurred in 2006. We believe that source code for the 2006-era versions of the following products was exposed: Norton Antivirus Corporate Edition; Norton Internet Security; Norton SystemWorks (Norton Utilities and Norton GoBack); and pcAnywhere.
With this incident pcAnywhere customers have increased risk. Malicious users with access to the source code have an
increased ability to identify vulnerabilities and build new exploits. Additionally, customers that are not following general security best practices are susceptible to man-in-the-middle attacks which can reveal authentication and session information. General security best practices include endpoint, network, remote access, and physical security, as well as configuring pcAnywhere in a way that minimizes potential risks.At this time, Symantec recommends disabling the product until Symantec releases a final set of software updates that resolve currently known vulnerability risks. For customers that require pcAnywhere for business critical purposes, it is recommended that customers understand the current risks, ensure pcAnywhere 12.5 is installed, apply all relevant patches as they are released, and follow the general security best practices discussed herein.
I don’t know how much marketshare PCAnywhere maintains nowadays- most Windows desktops and servers ship with a free remote desktop client, and most customers I encounter today use either citrix or desktop sharing services like WebEx. But this whole episode is still an embarrassment to big yellow.
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Court Compels Hard Disk Decryption
Jan 26th
In the first case of its kind, a woman has been ordered by a court to decrypt her hard drive so that prosecutors can use the decrypted files against her in court. She tried to plead the fifth amendment and not turn over the files, but was somehow overruled. This is different from border crossing cases where customs officials have compelled decryption for use in searches- since the laptop is treated like a “container file” and the container is not actually on US territory.
From Wired here by way of Ed at RightRant:
A judge on Monday ordered a Colorado woman to decrypt her laptop computer so prosecutors can use the files against her in a criminal case.
The defendant, accused of bank fraud, had unsuccessfully argued that being forced to do so violates the Fifth Amendment’s protection against compelled self-incrimination.
The authorities seized the laptop from defendant Ramona Fricosu in 2010 with a court warrant while investigating financial fraud.
The case is being closely watched (.pdf) by civil rights groups, as the issue has never been squarely weighed in on by the Supreme Court.
They have the data on that drive already. But if you have to verbally disclose a password to decrypt, how is that not self incrimination? I am usually on the law enforcement side of things when it comes to cyber evidence, but in this case, the accused has solid rights. They can take property under due process, but they cannot compel you to speak a single word against yourself, and that includes a password. It will be interesting to see what happens with this case. What she should have said is she uploaded all of the files to MegaUpload.
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(1 votes, average: 6.00 out of 6) Loading ...RIP Dick Tufeld
Jan 25th
Lost in Space was a show that hit reruns when I was a child, and they both fascinated and terrified me. I am saddened to learn that the voice of B9, the Lost in Space robot died today. Dick Tufeld had a truly iconic voice.
He was 85. Went down swingin’ I hope.
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...3 PM Music: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers – “Swingin’”
Jan 25th
A great re-release video by Tom from 1999. And this is an outstanding music video too starring Luke Wilson and Robin Tunney.
I always think that going down swinging is the only way to go.
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...Chuck Woolery on Mob Rule
Jan 25th
This is good stuff from Chuck here, reminding us we are not a Democracy.
And I love the quote: “You can judge the arrogance of your politician by the ignorance of their constituents.”
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Arkansas Democrat Kills Own Pet and Blames Republicans
Jan 25th
Democrats have a long- sad- history of creating fake hate crimes against themselves in an attempt to draw attention to themselves and become some kind of perverse martyr. With Jewish liberals, they draw swastikas on their own homes. Blacks will sometimes burn crosses or tie pieces of rope into a noose. So what does a white hillbilly from Arkansas do to fake hate crime himself? Why murder his own cat and write “liberal” on it of course!
From a liberal local blog here:
It was Jake Burris, Ken Aden’s campaign manager. Last night, Jake and his four kids had come back to their Russellville home. As they were getting out of the car, one of his children discovered their family cat dead on the front porch. One side of the animal’s head had been bashed in and an eyeball was hanging out of its socket. But there was something even more horrifying to be found on the corpse.
Written across the animal’s fur in black marker was the word “LIBERAL“.
This is terrorism. There’s no other word for it. A police report has been filed. Jake said the kids seem to be handling it okay. The one that discovered the cat was too young to be able to read and Jake had quickly gotten the others into the house before they saw it. Pope County is an insanely conservative area and the Aden campaign has been shaking things up even there and it looks like another right wing sociopath with a taste for violence has come crawling out of the woodwork in response. I asked Aden for a comment on the record:
“This is sickening. To kill a child’s pet…I’m at a loss for words…I’ve seen the best and the worst of humanity, but this is something else.”
Both Ken and Jake though made it clear that they weren’t going to back down on the campaign trail, both agreeing that caving to this kind of behavior would only make things worse.
“I’ve got a gun and I know how to use it.”, Jake said. “If I have to protect my kids I’ll do it without hesitation.”
This happened the same night that Gabby Giffords, the survivor of a heinous act of violence, announced she was resigning from Congress. To think of something happening here like what happened in Arizona, the possibility of that happening to Ken or to someone on his campaign team, is frightening beyond belief.
This is laughable. Jake Burris killed his own cat to garner attention and sympathy in his own “insanely conservative district.” And no, its not terrorism, its just another liberal desperate for attention. And to even compare what happened to Gabby Giffords is sickening. Gabby was shot in the face by a crazed LIBERAL pothead- and not for anything Sarah Palin had said, which is still apparently the meme among liberals. The news will come out soon that this was all staged to garner sympathy, and the only terrorism going on is Jake Burris terrifying his own children in the name of liberal idealism.
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...Finally! A Matt Damon Movie I’d Pay to See
Jan 24th
Zoos are for beginners. Wanna cage the ultimate animal? Ditch the zebras and monkeys and get yourself a jail!
Now I’m gonna sit around daydreaming of what I would do if I owned my very own jail. Could it be true? Could you really buy your very own jail? That would be awesome, especially on Shiv Wednesdays!
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These Guys Wipe Their Ass With Your Privacy
Jan 24th
This sounds a little bit like my own privacy and legal statement.
The makers of the Firefox plugin “Screenshot Pimp” are telling you the truth about putting your privacy in their hands:
Privacy Policy
We firmly believe that privacy is unimportant and meaningless to you. If it were not, you probably would not have a Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn account: and you certainly wouldn’t ever use a search engine like Google. If you’re one of those tin-foil-hat crazies that actually cares about privacy: stop using our services and get a life.
We agree with Mark Zuckerberg when he pithily opined “The age of Privacy is Over.”
Our privacy policy is a reflection of this conviction. Therefore, to satisfy the absurd privacy requirements of various legal entities (and so you understand exactly where you stand with us) we are pleased to present our privacy policy:
1. We are the company that cares about your privacy. Specifically, while most other companies are concerned with protecting your privacy, we care about profiteering and violating it when expedient or useful.
2. You may think of using any of our programs or services as the privacy equivalent of living in a webcam fitted glass house under the unblinking eye of Big Brother: you have no privacy with us. If we can use any of your details to legally make a profit, we probably will.
3. We will track and log everything we can about all the dirty (and clean) things you do and like with cookies, GPS, secure connections and or whatever technology exists today or becomes available at any time in the future.
4. By using any of our services, you grant us permission to surgically implant a tracking microchip of our choosing in your body and sell all collected information to the highest bidder . . . and to all other bidders. You also agree to regular updates and reinstalls of said device entirely at our discretion for up to 50 years after the end of your natural life.
5. If the opportunity arises to sell or otherwise use this or any information, data or meta data about you or your world, we will jump at that opportunity like a pitbull on a fresh steak
6. Please email us to tell us some of your secrets. We may, at our sole discretion (or lack thereof), broadcast, reveal, sell, manipulate, or otherwise use these secrets, or any information we collect to our benefit whenever, wherever, and however we choose.
7. We are right now looking at you through your webcam. Do you always move your lips like that when you read? We also recorded what you were doing last week and are sending the video to (you know who). If the prior statements are not true, it’s because in addition to everything else, we reserve the right to lie to you, and you agree to believe us and hold us harmless for any and all such lies. Furthermore, if we are not recording everything you’re doing through your webcam, it’s either because we haven’t figured out how, you’re just not that interesting, or both.
8. We are serious about all of the above. So don’t go trying to sue us later with some nonsense like “I thought that was all satire.” All your privacy are belong to us. We mean it.
9. Cookies: We like chocolate chip cookies. You agree to furnish any employee or associate of our company with fresh chocolate chip cookies upon request. That’s the price of using our programs and or services (in addition to any other price we come up with).
10. Spam. You agree that nothing we do with the access and information you grant to us shall be called Spam: even if it is. We prefer the term “bacon”, because . .. mmmmmmmm bacon.
Best privacy policy evah! Thanks to Brian Krebs.
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Canadian Web Developer Sentenced to Death in Iran
Jan 22nd
Saeed Malekpour is a web developer and an Iranian citizen who was living in Canada and trying to become a Canadian citizen. He flew back to Iran to visit his father in 2008 and somehow managed to get arrested for inventing the method for uploading porn to the internets. Now the mullahs for the Religion of Peace who are running Iran have sentenced him to death like a common street homosexual.
From Mashable here:
An Iranian court has upheld its decision to sentence 35-year-old Saeed Malekpour to death for developing photo-uploading software used by porn websites.
Iran’s Supreme Court maintains Malekpour promoted such sites because his name was on the software. Amnesty International says Malekpour was unaware that his software was being used for pornography. He was sentenced to death in June 2011. The court accused Malekpour of “insulting and desecrating Islam.” On Tuesday, the court ruled to move forward with the death sentence, which could be immanent, Amnesty says.
Malekpour, a Canadian citizen, was arrested when he visited his father in Iran in 2008. He was allegedly tortured for one year while he was held in solitary confinement in Tehran’s Evin Prison.
Iran’s draconian stance toward Internet freedom is well known. Earlier this month, the government announced a “Halal” Intranet, free of Western influence.
The man is going to get murdered by the Iranian state for writing an ActiveX script to transfer files from the desktop to a server? And liberals thought the world was being unfair to MegaUpload’s Kim DotCom? But a State that murders every homosexual it can find, is going to cap a Canadian WebDev guy, and the strongest adjective this article can use to describe the disgusting situation is “Draconian?!” We should tell the Iranians who the real author of that software was- Mumia Abu Jamal!
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...PotHeads Win: Gabbie Giffords Quits Congress
Jan 22nd
Gabrielle Giffords, a Democrat, bravely fought back against her debilitating gunshot wound and is this week resigning from Congress. She is a patriot and a great American. I would have been proud to count her as my own representative had I lived in Arizona.
So am I going to turn this into a political issue? You betcha, but I really don’t care about what flavor the next Congressman is going to be from her district. Gabbie will be a tough act to follow and I’m certain her constituents will use her as the measuring stick to get someone great, regardless of the political party.
Jared Loughner, her attacker, had psychological problems that were extremely exacerbated by his marijuana abuse- an abusive level that is now often viewed in this country as a private matter and a right rather than the criminal matter it actually is. Decriminalization of marijuana and lack of the will to enforce laws on the books have led to massive amounts of drugs coming across the Mexican border and hundreds of deaths in Mexico and the US due to Cartel activities.
Gabby Giffords is quitting because she got shot in the head by a pothead psycho. Loughner became a pothead psycho because Arizona and the Federal Government got soft on marijuana enforcement. Just a sad situation all around.
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...Nightmare Fuel: Spider Population Explosion
Jan 22nd
This is why you don’t always just smoosh a spider.
Thanks to DuckDuckGrayDuck.
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...1 AM Music: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers – “You Don’t Know How it Feels”
Jan 21st
Yep, its an old song, but TomPetty’s Youtube account just posted this up to promote his 2012 tour, and its an awesome video.
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Nightmare Fuel: Beavis and Butthead in Real Life
Jan 20th
A makeup artist created lifelike busts of what Beavis and Butthead would look like if they were real people, and all I can say is these guys would have trouble getting anyone to pump their gas much less a table at a restaurant.
You can see the rest here, including the very frightening closeup of Beavis.
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...Drunk Middle-Aged High School Principal Doesn’t Want Cougar as School Mascot
Jan 19th
Utah’s Corner Canyon High School’s student body got together and thought the school mascot should be a Cougar. The alliteration is perfect, after all- Corner Canyon Cougars sounds like a kick-ass football team to me. But no. Mary Bailey, the middle-aged principal who frequents bars to pick up young men in their early twenties, thinks that a cougar mascot would be disrespectful to the ladies.
From CBS here:
One Utah school district believes a cougar mascot would be insensitive to women.
The Canyons School District overrode the students top choice of a cougar mascot for their high school that is to be completed in 2013.
Would-be Corner Canyon High School students chose the Cougars as their mascot — a name principal Mary Bailey said carries an ugly connotation that is disrespectful to women.
In popular culture, the cougar is a sexually aggressive middle-aged woman who attracts younger men.
The school board, which consists of six men and one woman, thought the Charger would be more appropriate, which was on the ballot but failed to appeal to students as the cougar had.
Lame. The kids should all show up to school in cougar print.
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MegaUpload Closed Down for Piracy; Cannibalism
Jan 19th
I got files. Lots of files. I have so many files that I need huge storage space to store it all. But I have local storage for my files. I don’t give my stuff to websites, file lockers, drop boxes, and especially not to MegaUpload. And its true- I don’t do online backups because I choose to maintain custody of all of my data. And because I don’t use online filestores, the story about MegaUpload having its site raided by the FBI was a little bit alarming, and I thought it might be some type of gross overreach of justice and quite a bit on the shady side- And then I got a load of the fat piece of shit who calls himself Kim Dotcom, and thought instantly, oh yeah, they’re all guilty. He looks like he’s been eating third graders.
From CNET here:
The FBI has busted the operators of Internet locker service Megaupload, which had become one of the most popular video destinations on the Web, according to a statement from the U.S. Justice Department and FBI. Seven people have been named in an indictment and four suspects have been taken into custody. They have been charged in Virginia with crimes related to online piracy, including racketeering conspiracy, conspiring to commit copyright infringement, and conspiring to commit money laundering.
The suspects face a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.
Megaupload is led by Kim DotCom, aka Kim Schmitz, a German with a colorful history who was once convicted of a felony but who has repeatedly denied engaging in piracy.
“This action is among the largest criminal copyright cases ever brought by the United States,” the statement said. The action “directly targets the misuse of a public content storage and distribution site to commit and facilitate intellectual property crime.“
This story, the photo of a massive rich fatty, plus the fact that Anonymous had a collective hissy fit today and launched DDoS attacks against DoJ and Music and Movie studio sites, leads me to believe that MegaUpload was being quite shady indeed. You can have file storage, but you can’t facilitate the commission of criminal filesharing. Napster was the first, then Kazaa, Gnutella, and all the rest. If you don’t first secure the site against illegal sharing you are headed for trouble.
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(1 votes, average: 1.00 out of 6) Loading ...Spirit of Detroit Statue
Jan 19th
Spirit of Detroit, a photo by kaszeta on Flickr.
This statue is one of the few cool things to look at in Detroit in addition to some fantastic gothic architecture. The statue is supposed to symbolize a relationship with God, but it looks like a huge blue guy is going to crush a tiny family with a painful spikey ball.
Leave it to Detroit to evoke images of being all stabby.
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(1 votes, average: 6.00 out of 6) Loading ...N00b Intertubes Manual
Jan 18th
N00b Intertubes Manual, a photo by BelchSpeak on Flickr.
If you are new to the Interwebs, Welcome! I think I have found just the merchandise for you!
First is this handy handbook that you can use to write down all of your usernames and passwords for your favorite online locations, and you can carry it everywhere with you!
Also, you can get the NEW EDITION of the Texting Dictionary of Acronyms so you can finally decipher what all those cool kids are writing in the chatrooms. Nice, right?
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...Detroit River and Belle Island
Jan 17th
Detroit River and Belle Island, a photo by BelchSpeak on Flickr.
It seems like the prettiest thing in Detroit is looking across the river at Canada.
This was taken from an observation deck at the Detroit Renaissance Center. The day was mostly overcast and often you couldn’t see below the cloudline, but the river was a deep aqua color despite the cruddy weather.
And back during prohibition, bootleggers would drive across the frozen lake to deliver hooch!
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