Archive for June, 2006

Nebraska Screws Deadbeat Dads and Single Moms

Well, this is only a partial screwing. It seems like the security was breached by either a script kiddie or an automated worm, but it exhibits how important it is for all branches of State Governments to maintain very tight security controls on its public webservers.

From the AP here:

Hacker gets into Neb. child-support system

LINCOLN, Neb. – A hacker broke into the child-support computer system run by the state Treasurer’s office and may have obtained names, Social Security numbers and other information of 300,000 people and 9,000 employers.

The system helps collect and disperse child-support payments.

The hacker got into a back-up computer server Wednesday morning for about 40 minutes and launched a virus, which Ross said was immediately removed.

Ross said the hacker was “probably from outside the United States.”

He said he did not believe any information was downloaded but that the State Patrol is launching a computer forensic investigation of the incident.

What is a backup server doing on the Internet? To launch a virus, an attacker must have system level access, so it means that the webserver was not properly configured.

Someone should get a pink slip over this.

It’s hard enough to pay child support or raise a child by yourself. The last thing you need is for the State to be completely negligent and expose your already tenuous financial stability to the grave risk of identity theft.


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President, Prime Minister, Pay Respects to the King

I’m not sure, but this may be the first time that a sitting President has visited Graceland. President George Bush, First Lady Laura Bush, and Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi are going to Graceland for a tour and to pay their respects to the King of Rock and Roll.

They will be met at Graceland by ‘Cilla and Lisa Marie.

They turned off the Graceland Webcams for the duration of the event, but you can take a virtual tour of Graceland here.

From ABC News Here:

At Graceland, recently designated a National Historic Landmark, Bush and Koizumi will see the white-column, two-story colonial most visitors see. There are the shag carpets and ceramic monkeys of the Jungle Room, which Elvis famously furnished with a 30-minute shopping spree; the glossy black baby-grand piano near the living room’s white, 15-foot sofa; hundreds of gold records, outfits and guitars in the home’s museums; and the singer’s grave out by the swimming pool.

Also like others, they won’t get a peek at the private upstairs quarters, including the bedroom and bath where Elvis died of heart disease and drug abuse in 1977.

But the leaders get a perk most don’t. Squired around the manse’s gaudy interiors by Presley’s only child and heir, Lisa Marie, and her mother, Priscilla, they have tour guides almost as interesting as the tour.

The visit and Koizumi’s Elvis obsession was a top topic even during the leaders’ otherwise-serious joint news conference Thursday at the White House.

“We’ve agreed to take two questions a side,” Bush instructed reporters. “Walking in, I reminded the prime minister of one of Elvis’s greatest songs, ‘Don’t Be Cruel,’ so keep that in mind when you ask your question.”

Koizumi ended the session with his own Elvis song reference: “Thank you very much, American people, for ‘Love Me Tender.’”


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Recovered VA Laptop

Wow, law enforcement actually got one back. The laptop that contained the personal information for up to 26 million veterans has been found. Forensics are being performed to determine if and how much of the data may have been accessed.

From the AP here:

Government says stolen VA laptop recovered

WASHINGTON – The government has recovered the stolen laptop computer and hard drive containing sensitive data for up to 26.5 million veterans and military personnel, Veterans Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson said Thursday.

Nicholson said law enforcement officials were still investigating to determine whether data from the equipment, which included names, birth dates and Social Security numbers, had been duplicated or utilized in any way.

Nicholson offered no immediate details on how the laptop was recovered. He acknowledged that the burglary “has brought to the light of day some real deficiencies in the manner we handled personal data.”

Real deficiencies? Like the lack of encryption? Duh.

It is also interesting to note that this was likely the FBI that got this laptop back. Normally simple theft of a computer would be treated like a local crime. You get a police report so you can file an insurance claim and the case is closed. But when Congressmen get uppity, the FBI gets involved and the case gets solved using good police work.

Which now begs the question. At what point should the FBI get involved to track down a laptop? What is the cutoff line? 20 Million Americans with data exposed? Ten?

UPDATE!

The data was not accessed.

The FBI, in a statement from its Baltimore field office, said a preliminary review of the equipment by its computer forensic teams “has determined that the data base remains intact and has not been accessed since it was stolen.”


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Islamic Law Backwards

Next up for the Religion of Peace is how backwards their values are. If you plot to murder over 200 people, you get 26 months in jail and are treated as a hero when you are released.

If you publish a magazine that has fully clothed women that are beautifully posed, you have to flee town and face charges that would get you 32 months in prison.

From the AP here:

Playboy editor a suspect in Indonesia case

JAKARTA, Indonesia – Playboy magazine’s editor-in-chief and first centerfold model in Indonesia were formally named by police Thursday as suspects in an indecency case against the publication.

Authorities said they were investigating Kartika Gunawan, a woman who posed in lingerie in a premiere edition here in April, and Erwin Arnada, the editor. They could be prosecuted, and if convicted, imprisoned for two years and eight months.

Recently, Abu Bakar Bashir was released from prison after serving only 26 months for plotting the mass murder of 200 in the Bali Bombing. See Little Green Footballs here and Sydney Morning Herald here.

One of Bashir’s Cleric/Terrorist buddies has been running around telling his followers this stupid lie:

He said Prophet Mohammed had promised that “if someone died as a martyr, then the first drop of his blood will wipe out his sins, a crown will be put on him, with a diamond worth more than the world and everything inside it, and that it would salvage the souls of 70 family members”.

What a devilish religion. You can kill hundreds, and its okay. But print a girlie magazine, and you are in REAL trouble. I say that the next time the USA needs to bomb an Islamic country, the populace should be bombed with pornos and bacon. That seems to hurt them more.

UPDATE!

Yet another example of how stupid their laws are can be found from the AP HERE. A man is serving four years in prison for making liquor!

Oh, and he apparantly shoved a lightbulb up his ass. What a great idea.

MULTAN, Pakistan (Reuters) – Fateh Mohammad, a prison inmate in Pakistan, says he woke up last weekend with a glass lightbulb in his anus.

Wednesday night, doctors brought Mohammad’s misery to an end after a one-and-a-half hour operation to remove the object.

“Thanks Allah, now I feel comfort. Today, I had my breakfast. I was just drinking water, nothing else,” Mohammad, a grey-beared man in his mid-40s, told Reuters from a hospital bed in the southern central city of Multan.

Mohammad, who is serving a four-year sentence for making liquor, prohibited for Muslims, said he was shocked when he was first told the cause of his discomfort. He swears he didn’t know the bulb was there.


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Oh Yeah! Spidey 3 Trailer

Wow, this one looks good. It will have Spidey versus Sandman and the New Green Goblin, Harry Osborne. Peter and Harry will fight each other too, not just Spider-man and Gobbie. Gwen Stacy is in this flick, so that means that the poor girl will die tragically and accidentally at the hands of Spider-man, who will be under the evil influence of….

The Black Symbiant Costume! The trailer is here, and it is chilling how well it looks like they stay true to Spidey history. Is that Peter Parker trying to destroy his suit in a bell tower?

Sigh. 11 Months until May 2007. Thanks to OhNoes Blog Here, where he has some more cool screen caps posted.


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Palestinian Toys

When Palestinians play in the streets, what game or toys do they play with? A soccer ball? Nope. Stickball? No. I’ve got it! Skateboards! Sorry. Hopscotch? Nah.

They play Hot Potato. With a Live Grenade. Fun for the whole family.

From the AFP here:

GAZA CITY (AFP) – Two Palestinians were killed and another seven, including a baby, wounded when a grenade accidentally exploded in the southern Gaza Strip.

Family members were playing with a grenade in the town of Khan Yunis when it exploded, killing 23-year-old Qassem Massud and his one-year-old niece, medical and security sources said Wednesday.

All the casualties were members of the same family.

Palestinians should try Twister or any other game from Milton Bradley. Thanks to Little Green Footballs for the story.


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US-CERT Chief Way Overpaid

I know Andy Purdy. I like him, and he is a capable manager, but as the article below mentions, he does not have a stranglehold on cyber issues facing government and critical civilian infrastructures. And he is way overpaid for what he is supposed to do.

From the AP here:

Deal for cybersecurity chief questioned

WASHINGTON – The Bush administration’s cybersecurity chief is being paid $577,000 under a two-year agreement with the university that employs him and also does extensive business with the federal office he manages.

Donald “Andy” Purdy Jr. has been acting director of the
Homeland Security Department’s National Cyber Security Division for 21 months. His contract, which has drawn attention from members of Congress, is paying him more than the $175,000 annual salary that Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff earns.

Purdy is employed by Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, which has loaned him to the Homeland Security Department in exchange for the government paying nearly all of his salary. Meanwhile, Purdy’s cybersecurity division has paid Carnegie Mellon $19 million in contracts this year, almost one-fifth the unit’s total budget.

Purdy said he has not been involved in discussions over his office’s business deals with the school.

Some lawmakers who oversee the Homeland Security Department questioned the decision to hire Purdy as acting cybersecurity director. They noted enduring criticism by industry experts and congressional investigators over the department’s performance on cybersecurity matters.

So DHS is giving Carnegie Mellon University 19 million bucks. In exchange, DHS gets the US-CERT website, cyber advisories, about a dozen or so staffers from CMU’s old CERT CC unit. And, they get Andy Purdy. Stubborn refusal to change outmoded procedures and resistance to using capable COTS cyber monitoring and correlation products? That’s free.

There is obviously a huge potential conflict of interest here too. Purdy is leading an organization, and his salary is paid by its largest contractor? Purdy says that he is not involved in any negotiations with CMU. This may be true. While Purdy may not be trying to influence decisions on whether to increase the DHS grants and contracts to CMU, he is certainly doing nothing to deter them either.

See previous articles about US CERT here.


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M00P Hacker Crew Busted

Good work by multinational law enforcement agencies nabbed a hacker crew that is suspected of creating worms and trojans for the propigation of botnets.

From TechWeb here:

Three M00P Hackers Arrested

Authorities in the U.K. and Finland said Tuesday that they had arrested three men suspected of being part of the M00P hacker gang, which has created and distributed numerous worms and Trojan horses for at least the last year.

The British Metropolitan Police’s Computer Crime Unit, the Finnish National Bureau of Investigation, and the Finnish Pori Police Department combined to arrest the trio: a 63-year-old Suffolk man, a 28-year-old man in Scotland, and a 19-year-old man in Finland. Police in the two countries raided several residences and seized servers and other computers.

M00P has been linked to a number of worms and Trojans — including Dogbot, Hackarmy.c, Santabot.a, Shuckbot.a, Rbot.bf, and Tibick.a — that have been used to hijack large numbers of computers to produce a botnet, said U.K.-based security vendor Sophos Tuesday.

The trojans the crew used were unremarkable, and quite typical of IRC thin clients used to download more malware. Most shocking about this article is that Grandpa, 63, has some elite haxor skills.


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Superman Returns- Avoids Child Support

If he could see the new Superman movie, Christopher Reeve would be rolling over in his grave- that is, uh, if he wasnt paralyzed. And dead.

Think that was bad? The new Superman movie is worse. The acting, the special effects and the directing was excellent, making this the best Superman movie technically and visually. Its the story that was so awful. That, and the forced comparisons between Superman and Jesus Christ.

Let’s start with the story. This movie takes place as a sequel to the first series of movies starring Chris Reeve. Superman had supposedly gone on a five year mission to see if pieces of the planet Krypton still existed, and having found little or nothing of value, he comes home, gets his old job back at the Daily Planet, and resumes his acts of do-goodery.

Superman is now a multi-cultural, globalist icon. There is one telling scene where the editor of the Daily Planet asks a reporter to find out if Superman “Still stands for Truth, Justice and… the rest of it.” The glaring omission of the “American Way” should be a blow to patriotic Americans everywhere.

Superman uses his superpowers to stalk Lois Lane, and he becomes a Peeping Tom using his Xray vision to watch her in her home, and uses his super hearing to spy on her conversations with her live-in boyfriend. Lois Lane has a kid too, and the child ultimately turns out to be Superman’s progeny who uses a piano to smoosh a bad guy.

I think one of Superman’s other super powers is the ability to avoid paying Child Support. He is Super Deadbeat Dad.

Meanwhile, Lex Luthor gets out of jail because Superman failed to appear in court to testify against Lex for his crimes in the previous movies. I suppose that Comic Book judges are even more brainless than real life judges. Lex brilliantly schemes and plots to wipe out America and create a deathtrap for Superman.

The comparisons to Jesus Christ could not be more blatant.

Superman, who was sent by his father to “save the hearts of mankind,” and who can float in the atmosphere and listen to the prayers and cries of humanity, sacrifices himself to save mankind from Lex Luthor’s schemes by willingly going to his death. After being beaten savagely by Luthor and his cronies as if it were a scene from the Passion of the Christ, Superman has his side pierced by a piece of kryptonite. And his hands begin to bleed as if he has a stigmata. Superman falls into the ocean after his beating in a crucifixion pose. Superman’s body is taken to a hospital where he clinically dies. A woman enters his private hospital room, past the centurion guard, to find the hospital room empty. Superman reappears to humanity and to Lois Lane, and in the final scene of the movie, he rises majestically into space.

If you are considering seeing this movie, bring a blanket and a pillow. Besides being preachy, there are long stretches of super boredom.


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Pickles, the Pickles! Oh, The Humanity!

YouTube is the greatest ever. You gotta see this clip of the Pickle Lady. This woman went on Maury because she has a horrible fear of Pickles. Hilarity ensues as Maury Staffers chase the crying, shaking phobia-riddled woman around the studio with a plate of Pickles! Click Here or on the Photo to see the video.

My favorite quote: “I don’t like the shape or texture of Pickles!” Hmmm…


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Rose Bites Man

Who knew that Guns N Roses are back touring? I had no idea until this story crossed by Yahoo News page. Axl is still stupid after all these years. Someone warm up the padded cell. Axl Rose is going to need it.

From the AP here:

STOCKHOLM, Sweden -
Axl Rose was arrested early Tuesday after allegedly biting a security guard in the leg in a hotel scuffle, police said.

“He was deemed too intoxicated to be questioned right away,” Hagg told The Associated Press.

It was unclear what caused the fight, but Swedish tabloids said the guard tried to intervene when the 44-year-old rocker started arguing with a woman in the hotel lobby.

In May, Rose and fashion designer Tommy Hilfiger capped an evening out at a new club called The Plumm in New York City’s Chelsea neighborhood with midnight fisticuffs.

The scuffle reportedly started after Rose moved the drink of Hilfiger’s girlfriend. According to Rose, Hilfiger, 55, smacked him in the arm and told him to put the drink back.

If tickets are on sale for any US dates, you may wish to hold off on purchasing them pending the upcoming nervous breakdown.


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Update on Vista Testing

After many fitful restarts, it appears that my Vista installation has stabilized. IE7 still panics and restarts just about any time I try to download large files. In fact, I can’t view the videos over at Hot Air, and merely browsing to ATI.com causes the browser to crash and restart.

One of the biggest pains in the ass was when a Microsoft Update broke my newly installed version of Office 2007 Beta, which Microsoft recommends that is beta tested along with Vista. The update was supposed to be a spam filter, but somehow it corrupted other Outlook settings and I had to reinstall the whole Office Suite. My biggest problem is that I had already deleted the 500 MB downloaded file from my system to preserve space, so I had to download it again. Sigh.

There are several things about the new OS that are really nice. For one, the help files have made the biggest leap forward. They are comprehensive, very easy to read, and the help files actually LOOK good. The whole system gets indexed at installation too, so searching for just about anything is fast and easy. In fact, the keyword searches in the search bar will also produce results from the help files, for instance, if you want to find information on text to speech, you cant type that phrase in the search window and the help file will show you how to adjust text to speech on Vista.

This OS also takes security very seriously, almost to the point of annoyance. IE7 works hard to identify websites with expired certificates, invalid certificates, and does a good job of recognizing phishing websites. The built in spyware protector, Windows Defender, does a great job in identifying or blocking changes in browser settings, host file changes, and recognizing malware.

The beta feedback program is working pretty good too. With the IE crashes, for instance, I open a simple applet, wizard my way through by picking problems with Vista or IE7, and the feedback system automatically selects batches of logfiles to upload to Microsoft for analysis.

So other than being forced to use Firefox for a stable browser, Vista is looking pretty good.


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Comcast Blows; Verizon FiOS Rules

First of all, it has been raining non-stop here in the DC Metro area for 2 days now. Rivers and creeks are cresting their banks. Roads are washing out. Underpasses are filling with water. The Beltway was temporarily closed due to weather. A 140 year old elm tree fell over at the White House.

And, predictably, during heavy rainstorms, there are rampant power outages, downed lines, cable TV outages, and the cloudy weather blocks satellite reception. I used to have comcast, and besides it being extremely expensive, the installation and service takes forever if there is a problem.

Case in point is a sensational new video up on YouTube this past week in which a Comcast repairman showed up at a Northern VA man’s home to fix his cable connection to get his broadband working. The repairman was filmed sleeping on the customer’s couch, and the customer uploaded the video to Youtube. The video became virulent and everyone saw it. Even Comcast HQ. Comcast fired the guy today. Click the photo below to see the YouTube video.

From the AP here:

Comcast employee sleeps during house call

PHILADELPHIA – Comcast Corp. has fired an employee for sleeping on a customer’s couch during a house call after video of the incident became a minor Internet sensation.

Customer Brian Finkelstein posted video of the sleeping technician and told this story on YouTube.com, a site that lets users share videos.

His Comcast Internet connection had worked only intermittently since he moved to a new apartment June 1. A Comcast employee who came to Finkelstein’s home June 14 to replace the modem called the company for help. Put on hold for more than an hour, he caught some shut-eye while he waited.

Finkelstein, a Georgetown University law student, picked up his video camera, added an Eels song with the lyrics “I need some sleep,” and sent it to YouTube.

This is not the first customer-service issue to embarrass Comcast. In August, the company said it had fired two employees in the Chicago area for changing a woman’s name on her bill to a derogatory term after she repeatedly complained about poor service.

I have FiOS from Verizon.

There were zero outages of my service yesterday, and even if the power had flickered, Verizon installs the fiber converter with an Uninterruptable Power Supply to keep the cable boxes on. If you are tired of Comcast, and I know you are, check with Verizon to see if it is in your area yet and sign up!


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If I Screw Up My Website, Can I Blame Google?

A School System, who failed to secure their own webserver are now suing Google for “electronic trespassing” for including the names and social security numbers of over 600 students in the Google Search Cache.

Somehow, lawyers in Winston Salem, NC were able to convince a judge to issue an injunction to get Google to purge their servers of the school system’s data.
I am a usual critic of Google and its business practices, but in this case, Google is innocent. I don’t buy the school system’s story that Google used a student’s hard-coded password to spider the school system’s site. That’s not the way the Google web crawlers and indexing engine works. It is far more likely that the page was improperly protected.

From the Winston-Salem Journal here:

HICKORY — Catawba County Schools took aim at Google Friday.

The system filed an injunction against the Internet search engine

The temporary injunction, granted by the Honorable Richard D. Boner, calls for Google to remove any information pertaining to Catawba County Schools Board of Education from its server and index and alleges conversion and trespass against the corporation.

In short, schools say Google grabbed information they shouldn t have.

Google says they are wrong.

Either way, the names, Social Security numbers and test scores of 619 students were still bouncing around the Web for people with computers to find and read until late Friday, when the page was apparently removed.

Catawba County Schools chief technology officer Judith Ray said her department removed the file from its storage server Friday. They are also working to delete any other electronic files that may contain Social Security numbers or other secure student information.

However, in a way, the School System has a very small legitimate beef. This complaint that Google has very little in the way of customer service and assistance may be true. After all, its not like Google posts its 800 number for customer service. But if the school really wanted to remove the content from Google, Google provides an easy and fast way to do it. You can see how here.

Shocker, though, the school officials, who are too stupid to secure their own data, and too quick to jump to conclusions and blame Google, are also too stupid to use Google to find out how to remove cached content!


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Ann Coulter is a Deadhead?

Yes, and a raging one at that. Ann Coulter, the author of the best selling Godless, recently gave an interview to Taylor Hill at Jambands.com here, and she claims that she has been to 67 Dead shows.

I liked the interview because I’m a big AC fan, and having married a hippy who is introducing me to the jamband scene, including camping trips to music festivals, I was able to see lots of parallels between what Ann was saying and how it jibes with my own experiences.

Here are some great highlights from the Interview-

TH: Are there any other jambands you like?

AC: All the usual String Cheese Incident, Phish, Dave Matthews Band, Blues Traveler, New Potato Caboose. There s Jet, Cake, Outkast, 50 Cent, Black-Eyed Peas, Lord Alge, Beck, Kanye West (I like his Jesus song), Missy Elliot, and Eagles of Death Metal.

TH: What exactly do you love about the Grateful Dead?

AC: I really like Deadheads and the whole Dead concert scene: the tailgating, the tie-dye uniforms, the camaraderie it was like NASCAR for potheads. You always felt like you were with family at a Dead show a rather odd, psychedelic family that sometimes lived in a VW bus and sold frightening looking veggie burritos. But whatever their myriad interests, clothing choices, and interest in illicit drugs, true Deadheads are what liberals claim to be but aren’t: unique, free-thinking, open, kind, and interested in different ideas. Also, excellent dancers! Watching a Deadhead dance is truly something to behold.

TH: What’s your favorite Grateful Dead show, and why? Were you there?

AC: They were all my favorites especially the shows at Shoreline. It’s a beautiful outdoor amphitheater, the Dead’s home field, with California chardonnay for sale by the glass (in addition to not being a pot-smoker, I’m not much of a beer-drinker), and I often ran into my college Deadhead friends there. We’d go sailing during the day and see the band at night.

TH: It’s time to name names. Who are the other Deadheads who have infiltrated the conservative movement?

AC: As a Deadhead and a freedom-lover, I am wounded to the bone that you think the two do not naturally go hand in hand. The Deadheads I just met casually and not through conservative politics were almost always right-thinking, whatever they called themselves. Deadheads believe in freedom not a government telling people how much water they can have in their toilets or where they can smoke or whether they should be allowed to own a gun. (Remember the photos of Jerry testifying before some Congressional committee while chain smoking? Yeah, he’d really bond with Henry Waxman.)

One of my Dead friends I met at Vail made candles for Grateful Dead merchandizing. His daily routine consisted of waking up, smoking a bowl, and turning on the Rush Limbaugh radio show while he made his candles. (It’s true. He’s so far out there he practices this weird, freaky ritual known as commerce. Don’t try telling me pot is harmless!)

After Jerry died, U.S. Senator Spencer Abraham (R-MI) gave an incredibly touching tribute to Jerry Garcia and the good work the Dead’s Rex Foundation had done promoting the arts privately in contradistinction to millionaire actresses standing up in $50,000 gowns at the Oscars and demanding that hardworking waitresses and truck drivers be forced to support the arts through government taxation. You can look it up in the Congressional Record.

The idea of sailing in the day and taking in a show at night sounds like a very excellent day indeed.


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Katherine Lester Speaks on GMA

The Lesters went on Good Morning America and told Katherine’s story about running away from her parents to go to Jordan to meet a Palestinian man that she fell in love with on MySpace.

The divorced parents of Katherine are letting her continue to chat with Abdullah Psycho on MySpace. When asked if Katherine was still planning to convert to Islam, she stammered, “Uh… I’d rather not answer that question.”
Well, the parents are stupid for letting her continue to chat. Katherine is stupid if she thinks she can go to Jericho where the only thing that grows is dirt. And as Trench is fond of pointing out, ” How many of us that are in our 30′s can look back and say we were honestly in love at 17? I can’t. How about you?”

Maybe the counselling will work. What the Lesters really need to do is get that girl out of the house. Let her meet boys in real life in her hometown, and she will be just fine. She says that she plans on Abdullah coming to America instead of her going over to Palestine. That might take a while, unless she plans on marrying him abroad and bringing him in as her spouse?

Click the photo to see the video of Katherine Lester on GMA. Its about 9 minutes long.

She can definitely do better than a dirt-farming Muslim deliverman.


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Terrorist Indictment Released

You can view it here. Its a pretty interesting lead. Here are the terrorist’s names. Notice that none of them look particularly American, despite news reports that these are average Joes. Also, it is being reported that the terrorists are part of a “Radical Black Islam” gang, which usually brings to mind the New Black Panthers or something. But these names don’t look like typical Black Panther names. Five of these men are Americans.

Narseal Batiste, aka Brother Naz
Patrick Abraham, aka Brother Pat
Stanley Grant Phanor, aka Brother Sunni
Naudimar Herrera, aka Brother Naudy
Burson Augustin, aka Brother B
Lyglenson Lemorin, aka Brother Levi
Rotschild Augustine, aka Brother Rot

So it turns out that these bastards were going to blow up the Sears Tower, FBI Offices in several cities, and wanted to “kill all the devils we can” in a mission that would “be just as good or greater than 9/11.”

All of them are charged with the intent to provide material aid to a terrorist organization, Al-Queda, and levy war against the Government of the United States. Yeah, that is punishable by Death. Happy trails, dirtbags. No virgins for you! NEXT!

Update: Since they were busted in the planning phase, they will not face the death penalty.


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Windows Vista Beta Testing

I sent Microsoft 10 bucks and was sent a DVD of the latest version of its operating system, Microsoft Vista. So far, I really like the new look and feel. The windows are transparent in this version, and you can see what is layered on the desktop. The desktop also features some gadgets that can float on the desktop, such as a clock, a CPU monitor, quick notepad and more.

The new media player looks great! It organized my music by album, artist, and title. The album art is greatly improved over previous versions.

There are a couple of features that are going to get old pretty quickly, such as the system interrupts- This is a feature in which the operating system will stop and prompt for human intervention for any action that will alter the underlying baseline of the operating system. For instance, any program that communicates on the internet will prompt you to click okay to confirm. Any action dealing with the hardware or software wizards will do the same. As a security pro, I understand why- it prevents software and malware from self-installing or altering the system. This should help defeat botnet code and other trojans, including browser hijackers. But its annoying.

IE7 looks pretty good and operates much better in Vista than it does on XP, where I have been testing it out for a few weeks now. But make sure you keep a copy of Firefox around. I tried several times to download the Office 2007 beta from Microsoft using IE7, and the browser kept crashing and restarting. I have no idea why, and I reported it to Microsoft. I fired up Firefox, approved its usage on the Internet, and downloaded the software.


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Muslim Terrorists in Miami Nabbed, Sears Tower Saved

This is a story that will make you go “Whew!”

Terrorists living together in a warehouse in Miami were running a military-style bootcamp and were apparantly planning to attack the Sears Tower in Chicago.

And they were Muslims. Yes, followers of the Religion of Peace were planning on doing something heinous and violent in the name of Muhammad, a child molesting warlord from the 7th century.

From the AP Here:

MIAMI (AP) – Seven people were arrested Thursday in connection with the early stages of a plot to attack Chicago’s Sears Tower and other buildings in the U.S., including the FBI office here, a federal law enforcement official said.

One neighbor said the suspects had been sleeping in the warehouse while running what seemed to be a “military boot camp.”

The official told The Associated Press the alleged plotters were mainly Americans with no apparent ties to al-Qaida or other foreign terrorist organizations.

Residents living near the warehouse said the men taken into custody described themselves as Muslims and had tried to recruit young people to join their apparently militaristic group. They said the men, who appeared to be in their teens or 20s, had lived in the area about a year.

The men slept in the warehouse, said Tashawn Rose, 29. “They would come out late at night and exercise. It seemed like a military boot camp that they were working on there. They would come out and stand guard.”

She talked to one of the men about a month ago: “They seemed brainwashed. They said they had given their lives to Allah.”

Okay, what does “Mainly Americans” mean? Only 25 percent were foreigners? The article also goes on to say that the men spoke with what sounded like a Jamaican accent. I have the feeling that these were British Muslims. I look forward to the release of the names and details of this case.


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