I can't believe that came from your mouth!
Archive for September, 2008
Karma, Thy Name is Darwin
Sep 30th
147 people spontaneously reincarnated today in a beautiful Hindu ceremonial ritual involving crowds of people running around, screaming, and stepping on one another.
From Reuters here:
At least 147 people died in a stampede at a temple in the Indian desert state of Rajasthan as Hindus gathered to begin one of the most important religious festivals of the year.
A handful of people fell while climbing a steep slope toward the Chamunda temple, sited inside a hilltop fort near the city of Jodhpur, triggering the crush.
“People were falling over one another. Many ran but were trampled under the feet of thousands,” a witness said. Other witnesses said too many people were trying to pass through a narrow part of the climb at the same time. Many suffocated after they fell.
The crowds were especially large Tuesday, as pilgrims gathered for the start of the nine-day Navratri festival.
In India, stampedes are relatively common at temples, where thousands of people gather to pray during festivals and police fail to control the surging worshippers.
Last month, a similar crush outside a Hindu temple in the mountains of northern India killed at least 145 pilgrims. In January 2005, at least 265 Hindu pilgrims, including several women and children, were killed in a stampede near a remote temple in Maharashtra state.
According to Hindu traditions of Karma, these guys had it coming for something bad they did, maybe in a former life as a squirrel who hoarded too many nuts. But for religious stampedes, nothing beats the Hajj.
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Loading ...Godless Democrat Children Worship the Obama Messiah
Sep 30th
It is an integral part of the human spirit to want to worship something greater than itself. Personally, I have no problem with atheism. But when you substitute worshipping God with worshipping nature or a man, I do have a problem. This is what made nazism so disgusting- the worship of a man and blind following of a charismatic leader, which ultimately led to the destruction of a continent and the near annhiliation of a race of people. Behold as the new Demokrat Socialists sing praises by the Obama Youth Movement. Thanks to LGF for the video.
I wonder when they will get their nifty little “O” armbands? And here is the Nazi Youth video so you can draw your own comparisons. Michelle think this is more Maoist than Nazi.
Most insulting of all is the end of the video that pretends its a reminder to vote. Didn’t they mean, “Vote for Obama, our Lord and Savior?”
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...Sadness Sweeping Radiator Springs
Sep 29th
First Big Red burst through a guard rail and plummeted to his death. Next, Fillmore’s engine froze up after drinking a new experimental fuel. Sadly, Mater towed Fillmore’s body to the Radiator Springs chop shop because Fillmore was a staunch believer in reusing car parts.
But tragedy struck this past Sunday when it was reported that the Fabulous Hudson “Doc” Hornet, winner of three Piston cups in the ’50′s, succumbed to mechanical failure due to extensive internal rusting of his carburetor.
Some Radiator Springs residents are beginning to wonder if their little town is cursed.
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...Nokia Selling Its Firewall Appliance Business
Sep 29th
Back in the day, and that day was a Tuesday, at the beginning of the DotCom boom, I used to install lots of firewalls as a contractor for a vendor. It was that experience that grounded me in information security and served as a foundation for my current career. Most of those appliances installed were Nokia Firewalls. They were big and heavy and after installing two dozen or so of them, it actually got pretty easy to do. Some of my customers included Nike, Bluefly, and Martha Stewart before she went to the poke. I traveled coast to coast and even spent some time in America’s armpit, Arkadelphia Arkansas.
So its with a little sadness to note that Nokia is ditching their firewall appliance business to concentrate on their cellphones.
Steinnon says at his blog here:
Nokia, the cell phone giant, is finally selling its security appliance business. It terms of revenue there was a time when this business was the number three firewall company in the world after Check Point and Cisco.
Nokia bundled products from Check Point and ISS on hardware platforms that they had originally acquired from Ipsilon Networks in 1997 to create a purpose built appliance running a derivative of BSD. Through superior customer support and taking advantage of Check Point’s lack of an appliance strategy, Nokia’s security division thrived.
I can’t wait to see who gets the appliances.
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...Awesome Camping Trip: Cartney 3, Raccoons 0
Sep 29th
The camping trip at the Shenandoah River was great, despite the problems we encountered with the cabin, the chronic misty rain, and the fact that our kid summoned some kind of inner-redbull and fought sleep on both nights. And as always, the food cooked over the campfire was the highlight of the trip.
The cabin was pretty nice, but its amenities were horrible. The mattress we had was basically, a garbage bag of coilsprings. The in-ground charcoal grill collapsed due to rust and disrepair. The air conditioning didn’t work and the well water tasted funny. And worst of all was the stench of a backed-up septic system that bubbled up from the toilet, filling the cabin alternately with the aromas of ammonia and sulfur.
And sure, we are new parents, and perhaps a bit too optimistic about a toddler’s behavioral patterns, but we were convinced that Cartney would stick to his sleeping schedule. His bedtime is typically around 8:30 at night and he mostly sleeps through the night, waking once for a diaper change. We thought that if he ran around all day smacking raccoons with sticks, he would be very tired and have no problem sleeping in the portable “Lightning McQueen” cot. Boy did that idea ever FAIL. He did all the running around alright, but he refused to sleep, climbing out of his cot to play peekaboo with us until 11 PM. Bleary-eyed, we followed him to sleep 10 minutes later.
But all of the problems were easily eclipsed by the great time we had with family and friends, drinking beers around a campfire and eating yummy beef stew and fire-baked 9-grain bread. Thanks to Alton Brown’s Going Dutch episode for the pointers on curing my dutch oven and recipe ideas.
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...Looking Forward to the Weekend
Sep 25th
First weekend of fall, and we are going camping. I’m bringing ponchos because its gonna be drizzly. We are going to the Shenandoah River to teach the kid how to smack raccoons with sticks.
See my previous post here about this awesome camping spot.
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...Applause for Lake Anna Winery’s 2005 Merlot
Sep 24th
I had a great gift for Christmas from my brother: enrollment in the wine of the month club for Virginia Wines. I had never been disappointed with it, until that is, I saw that I got bottles from Lake Anna. You see, Lake Anna has never thrilled me when I have done tastings, both onsite and at wine festivals, and when I did a tasting there a couple of years ago, I left with the impression the winery was just trying to manufacture a product, not produce a fine Virginia wine. And a few of the wines from the James River region in the past just have not measured up to the great wines from the Loudon trail or from the Monticello region.
I had friends over tonight and it has been a few weekends since I had the chance to grill steaks. I had some bone-in ribeyes, asparagus, and potatoes on the grill, and because I had guests, I uncorked a bottle of red from my stash. I chose Lake Anna Winery’s 2005 Merlot, thinking I was opening a wine that would be more of a table wine than anything fancy. I like to save my better wines for celebrations. It was a casual night, so I wanted a casual wine. (That sounds better than me saying I was being cheap with my guests!)
When I poured it, I noticed that the wine was clearer than most Merlots and was redder than some of the heavier Merlots from the Loudon region. The taste was medium bodied and flavorful, and you could tell that it had fermented in oak, not steel. It paired really well with the grilled steak and veggies, and the wine was nothing like the wines I remembered from my last visit to Lake Anna winery. I definitely want more for my stash, and this time, I’m saving this Merlot for celebrations or when I get another great steak.
So if you are travelling between DC and Richmond, make a stop at the Lake Anna winery. You might be surprised at what you find.
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...Lawsuit Determines Symantec and ISS Stole Patented Tech for IDSes
Sep 24th
ISS’s RealSecure Intrusion Detection System and (I think) Manhunt from Symantec had incorporated anamoly detection capabilities into their software that was a patent infringement against SRI, a research group out of Stanford. The lawsuit has been going back and forth for years, but a jury finally made a determination and ISS and Symantec have to pay up. According to SRI, millions of bucks are at stake.
From Computerwire here:
IBM’s Atlanta-based Internet Security Systems unit and Symantec have lost a patent suit filed by SRI International, the research institute founded at Stanford University, which alleged the companies infringed its network surveillance patents.
California-based SRI filed the patent suit in the federal court in Delaware in 2004. The court ruled that the companies infringed two SRI patents. SRI has claimed the companies have made millions of dollars using its technology.
The patents in question are here and here. They deal with using statistical profiles to detect anamolies or suspicious activity on networks and the heirarchical listing of network events. ISS’s RealSecure uses such gadgetry, but the only IDS I can think of that Symantec would have used that did anything similar is the Manhunt product, which is end of life.
From the Manhunt Acquisition announcement here:
“We have developed next generation intrusion detection technology with protocol anomaly detection and behavioral flow techniques to detect, analyze and respond to attacks before they become a problem,” said Frank Huerta, Recourse president and chief executive officer. “We will be able to leverage Symantec’s global scale and brand strength necessary to take ManHunt to new heights in the market.”
It would be ironic if the lawsuit cost Symantec more money than they spent acquiring the Manhunt technology in the first place. Symantec paid $135 Million for Recourse, the maker of ManTrap, and it never really took off for them in sales. The Manhunt device was difficult to support, a pain to use, and development and updates languished. Finally, Symantec chucked the product in the trash. But the acquisition may come back to haunt them.
And this isn’t the first time Symantec was royally screwed by a bad acquisiton. When they bought Veritas, their stocks plummeted. Then they found out that Veritas owed a billion bucks in back taxes to the IRS.
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(1 votes, average: 6.00 out of 6) Loading ...Unisys Fires its CEO
Sep 24th
The company that raked in almost 2 Billion dollars in federal funding to build the massive TSA infrastructure as part of the DHS startup, has fired its CEO after dismal performance and an FBI investigation into criminal fraud of their operations tied to DHS contracts. And their stock is hovering around 3 bucks per share.
From CNET here:
IT services provider Unisys announced Tuesday it has begun a search for a new CEO, as the company struggles to right its operations.
Joseph McGrath, who has served as the CEO for the past three years, will step down by year’s end.
Unisys was up 2 percent in early morning trading to $3.22 a share, following the news.
A pullback by customers in the financial services industry, a drop in IT spending, and delayed government orders have contributed to the company’s woes, according to its quarterly reports.
Unisys has a huge presence in my town and I have friends that work there. Maybe a new CEO is just what they need.
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...1:30 PM Music: GoldFrapp- Happiness
Sep 24th
This is the second Goldfrapp video I’ve posted, (the other one is here) and I’m still not convinced that I would like their music if it weren’t for the fabulous videos that accompany the tunes. This video is amazing because it looks like its all shot in one take with a man in a white suit bouncing perfectly to the beat for over three minutes. I promise you will be smiling by the end of the video. Click to enjoy.
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...Moonbat Money
Sep 24th
Democrats are salivating over new British coins struck showing Obama in a Lenin-esque pose. The community organizer/messiah is not even elected yet, and already people think he belongs on the currency.
From Moonbattery here:
A company in Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter is making commemorative coins for American presidential hopeful Barack Obama. […] Windsor, Elizabeth & Windsor has already sold more than 300 limited edition commemorative silver coins to the Democratic Party to hand out to key members of the campaign to elect Obama. […] WEW is producing limited edition runs of gold, silver and platinum Obama coins, and plans to produce new ones in other finishes for public consumption if the demand emerges. […]
The company directors got the idea of producing the coins after seeing actress Meryl Streep talking about Barack Obama on a television programme. When they got in touch with the Democrats the party jumped at the chance. And the coins have proved such a hit that locally produced versions have already been launched to compete with the UK originals.
The coins show Senator Obama’s face, along with a picture of the White House and the legend “President of the United States of America”.
Bama Bucks. Dem Duckets. Fail Francs. Marxist Marks.
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...OMG, GTFO, Clay Aiken is GAY??!??!!!1eleven
Sep 23rd
Clay Aiken one-upped Lance Bass by coming out of the closet on People Magazine’s cover, but he was holding a newborn baby when he did it! He says he doesn’t want to teach his kid that lying is okay by denying his sexuality. But he must be planning on having lots of gay sex with lots of men- Otherwise, as a single Dad, why come out at all if he was planning on being celibate while he raised his child?
From JustJared here:
American Idol favorite Clay Aiken has finally come out as a gay man.
“Yes, I’m gay,” he tells People. “I cannot raise a child to lie or to hide things.”
The 29-year-old Idol alum is on the mag’s cover with newborn son Parker.
In May, it was announced that Clay had given his sperm by artificial insemination to pal Jaymes Foster, sister of David Foster and Clay’s producer.
What a cute kid. Its gotta be rough being so little and being the man of the house.
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...Joe Biden Mangles American History
Sep 23rd
Joe “the Gaffe” Biden is on a roll. He called Obama “Barack America” during a stump speech. And then to top that off, he told Katie Couric that FDR went on TV to explain the Stock market Crash of ’29. Which would be a nice trick since FDR wasn’t elected until 1933 and TV wasn’t available to the public until the 40′s.
From Politico here:
“When the stock market crashed, Franklin Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the princes of greed,” Biden told Couric. “He said, ‘Look, here’s what happened.’”
As Reason’s Jesse Walker footnotes it: “And if you owned an experimental TV set in 1929, you would have seen him. And you would have said to yourself, ‘Who is that guy? What happened to President Hoover?’”
How long before Obama fires “The Gaffe?” HotAir has more details.
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(1 votes, average: 6.00 out of 6) Loading ...DHS Scared Cyber Mission Will Get Yanked
Sep 23rd
DHS was on the hot seat last week during Congressional hearings on the ineffectiveness of the National Cyber Security Division. Private Sector experts, who were supposed to be partners in securing the nation’s cyber assets, complained that NCSD and US-CERT were failures in its mission and should be moved directly to a White House level of authority.
From CNET here:
After a week of dealing with critics arguing that some agency other than the U.S. Department of Homeland Security should handle the nation’s cybersecurity efforts, Homeland Security has come to its own defense.
DHS Undersecretary Robert Jamison said in a new blog post that “we must stay the course” and cybersecurity responsibility should not be reshuffled.
At multiple hearings last week, members of a cybersecurity commission told Congress that the DHS is incapable of handling cybersecurity, and the responsibility should be moved to the White House. In addition, the commission specifically criticized the lack of leadership from the DHS, which amounts to a direct criticism of Jamison himself.
Jamison emphasized the progress the DHS has made, which he pointed out to members of the technology industry last week. The DHS has been developing its new intrusion detection system “Einstein 2,” which the CSIS cybersecurity commission has acknowledged as a positive step, and the department is continuing to work with the private sector.
I think that moving the cyber mission to the White House would be a monumental mistake. That move would effectively make cyber security a political football to be kicked around by partisan politicians, even more so than now.
What really needs to happen is the Einstein project needs to become mandatory. Right now it is a voluntary program that Federal agencies can “opt in” to to have their networks monitored by DHS’s statistical anamoly detection engine. But even in its current configuration, Einstein is a failure because the government allowed their arm to be twisted by the privacy wonks at Carnegie Mellon, who are more aligned with EFF than the mission to secure federal networks against hackers.
If NCSD can get authority to make the program mandatory, and actually start monitoring packet payloads, US-CERT can grow into the equivalent of DISA for military networks- a top-down heirarchy of incident monitoring and network security.
But right now it doesn’t matter where you throw this turd: DHS or the Whitehouse- it will still stink.
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...FBI Invades Dorm Party; Hacker Soils His Shorts
Sep 22nd
David Kernell, the son of a Democrat State Representative in Tennessee, and probable hacker who broke into Sarah Palin’s Yahoo email, crapped his pants when the FBI busted in on his dorm party at Midnight Sunday morning. David and his roommates jumped out of windows while the Feds took names and pushed everyone outside so they could search the apartment.
Email Intruder is about to learn what a backdoor intrusion is.
From WBIR here:
The FBI is stepping up its investigation of a University of Tennessee student, David Kernell who hacked into the personal e-mail of Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin.
Agents with the FBI served a federal search warrant at the Fort Sanders residence of David Kernell early Sunday morning around midnight.
They presented their badges upon entering Kernell’s apartment, where several students were having a party, and took down their names.
The witness tells us they asked him and those who did not live in the unit to go outside. He believes the investigators took about 1.5 to 2 hours taking pictures of everything inside the apartment.
Kernell and his friends fled the apartment when the FBI agents arrived.
Kernell’s three roommates were also subpoenaed, and must testify this week in Chattanooga.
David Kernell is the son of Mike Kernell, a Democratic state representative from Memphis.
This young wealthy child of privelege does not believe that others should have the same privacy afforded to he and his liberal friends. Lets see how David likes his privacy in his jail cell when he tries to go to the bathroom in front of his cellmate, “Bubba the Meth Dealer.”
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...Obama Campaign Paid for Palin Smear Videos
Sep 22nd
The boys at the Jawa Report have done some pretty good investigative work and determined with a high degree of likelihood that Obama’s campaign manager, David Axlerod, paid a PR Firm, Winner and Associates to launch a viral video on YouTube to smear Sarah Palin.
The response after the Jawa Report broke the story? Winner and Associates launched their final solution. They began deleting their YouTubes and editing Wikipedia articles to hide their activities. Jawa has all the links.
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...Its Like Shooting a LASER
Sep 21st
Just a quick post about the Dillon Gatling Gun. According to this Fark article, every fifth bullet is a tracer. Just the thing needed for the video-gaming generation of warfighters. Take a look at the video.
And you think the music is too dramatic and cheery? Check out the magazine glossy ad:
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...Thank God the YardSale is Over
Sep 20th
The baby has outgrown all of his old toys and clothes and he definitely doesn’t need his infant swing, his exer-saucer, travel sleeper, or bassinette. Plus, we had loads of junk, books, DVD’s and other stuff that was just taking up too much room in our house. So we did the Great American Yard Sale (GAYS)® today to attempt to lure suckers customers to take the junk off our hands and also give us meager payment for the pleasure of doing so.
I guess it went okay. I mean, the weather was great, we had a good location at my father-in-law’s house, with lots of traffic and visitors, and at the end of the day we had to only take home one carload of our crap instead of the three carloads of crap we took to his house in the first place.
I threw some items on the sale pile that I was convinced no one in their right mind would even want, much less pay good money to carry it away, and to my surprise, those items sold quickly. On that pile were some of the worst DVD’s to be produced by Hollywood, like Me Myself and Irene and Adaptation. Old quilts were the first off the lot. Ugly framed artwork walked after some deep discounts. An old stereo receiver that probably didn’t even work sold for top dollar.
Ever wonder what happened to the fannypack phenomena from the early 90′s? Well, they are still used by just about everyone who goes to yard sales. And what’s the deal with immigrants that want to buy baby clothes and only have hundreds? I don’t carry hundred-dollar bills around. Suspicious, I tossed those bastards out of the yard sale. “Go to the Seven-Eleven and make change, pendejo!”
My wife’s grandmother graciously donated a few excess items of hers to the yard sale too. A couple of lamps, a gaudy piggy bank, some crockpots, and a George Foreman Grill. She came to keep us company while we watched strangers pick through our junk and to play with her great grandson. Oddly, after I had to take the baby home to get a nap around noon, Granny went home and took her George Foreman Grill with her. I guess she was thinking about all that grilled chicken she would be missing out on.
One of the oddest things we experienced were the lookie-loo drive-bys. These were people that would come roaring into the cul-desac , bang a yoo-eee at near-full speed with a brood of children pressing their noses to the back window of the mini-van before roaring off again. Of course its understandable that our little yard sale wasn’t the big flea market they were perhaps dreaming they would stumble across when they piled into the mini-van at 7:30 AM. What was worse than the drive-bys were the “pull-up gawkers.” These were mini-van drivers that would pull right into the driveway and take three minutes to stare at us and inventory our piles of unwanted junk like they were health inspectors checking the greasetraps at the local Sonics. Unsatisfied with our white-trash offerings, they would throw the mini-van into reverse and speed off to the next garage sale around the corner.
The “pull-up gawkers” weren’t insulting- just a little unsettling. But they did give me and my father-in-law a great idea for fun: We plan on driving around one weekend from yardsale to yardsale, being the “pull-up gawkers from hell.” We will pull up to yard sales, survey junk with obvious disdain, and then pull off, booing the yard sale hosts and flipping the finger as we burn rubber outta there. Unless of course, they have some really good stuff.
But I am very happy to report that all of the past week’s evenings spent assembling piles of junk, pricing the items, hanging signs, dropping junk off at my father-in-law’s house and advertising on Craigslist really paid off. We pulled in 175 bucks! Ka-Ching!!!
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...Reason 709 to HomeSchool: Whores Won’t Confuse Stripping With Teaching
Sep 19th
Some girls are born to be strippers. And with a name like Autumn Leathers, your career on the pole seems pretty much assured. But due to the lack of good strip joints in Cumberland, Maryland, Autumn Leathers had to become a school teacher, where she proceeded to give lap dances to 15 year old boys.
Well, actually, she did a lot more than lap dances, but rumor has it she did it for the boy’s lunch money. Make it rain, YEAH! From the Cumberland Times here:
Autumn Leathers, 24, of Frostburg was indicted on charges of third-degree sex offense, second-degree child abuse, sex abuse of a minor, unnatural or perverted practice, second-degree assault and fourth-degree sex offense in connection with alleged offenses involving one of the male students that she taught at Mountain Ridge High School.
She was involved with a 15-year-old boy over a several-month period. Police said the two would engage in sexual acts at Leathers’ home.
Leathers has been free on bond since her arrest Aug. 20, following a citizen’s complaint concerning a possible inappropriate relationship between Leathers and one of her students.
She was overheard in the teacher’s lounge saying “The thing I like most about High School boys is I keep getting older, and they just stay the same age.”
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...Midnight Music: Iron and Wine- Boy With a Coin
Sep 18th
This song has a hypnotic repeating guitar rhythm and singer Sam Beam’s voice and lyrics provide a beautiful melody. The dancers in the video are icing on this cake. Click to enjoy.
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