.....about anything, just start out......
Comments
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averagejoe said on Aug 21, 2008....
hello! -
anonymous said on Aug 21, 2008....
what do you want to chat about? -
averagejoe said on Aug 21, 2008....
I just got back from vacation, how are you and papajack doing? -
theduke said on Aug 21, 2008....
hi-ya joe! -
crybabylu said on Aug 21, 2008....
averagejoe----Hello to you!
anon----anything you choose. Don't know if I can answer, but you are welcome to chat about it!
averagejoe-----Papajack and I are doing fine!
duke-----hey, how's school going?
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crybabylu said on Aug 21, 2008....
joe----did you go anywhere special on your vacation? or just hung around the house? When I talked to Beth, she said she didn't know for sure what you and she were going to do on vacation. -
averagejoe said on Aug 21, 2008....
we went to missouri to see relatives. -
averagejoe said on Aug 21, 2008....
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sheltercrow said on Aug 21, 2008....
Subject: malware authors
"the focus of malware authors has shifted from digital vandalism to penetrating high-value networks for profit, evading detection has become a top priority. Their goal now is to drop a rootkit, bot or other piece of malware onto a target machine without being noticed and have the program stay in place for weeks or months while it gathers passwords, customer records or other valuable data, said Lenny Zeltser, a speaker at the Information Security Decisions conference here this week. Zeltser, the information security practice leader at Gemini Systems in New York, and an instructor at The SANS Institute, highlighted a number of techniques that are gaining favor in the hacker community at the moment." -
sheltercrow said on Aug 21, 2008....
Subject: clipboard hijack
"Adobe's product security incident response team PSIRT says it is investigating possible solutions to the clipboard hijack attacks spotted on Flash-based advertisements on high-profile Web sites. A barebones note on the PSIRT blog simply acknowledges the issue and promised more information after the investigation..." -
sheltercrow said on Aug 21, 2008....
Subject: McCain's Mansions
"The REAL McCain is a multimillionaire who owns ten luxurious homes. The REAL McCain backs President Bush's tax cuts for big corporations. The REAL McCain empathizes only with the interests of our nation's wealthy minority, not its money-strapped majority. But far too many are buying into McCain's deceit because the corporate press won't present the whole picture, so we created this video to educate the public about the REAL McCain." -
sheltercrow said on Aug 21, 2008....
Subject: Palestinian people
Predator and prey
by Robert C. Koehler
READ THE ARTICLE
Family politics and the new Gaza crisis
by Ramzy Baroud
"Yet more haunting images of blindfolded, stripped down Palestinian men being contemptuously dragged by soldiers in uniform from one place to another. Yet more footage of bloodied men lying on hospital beds describing their ordeals to television reporters who have heard this story all too often. Yet more news of Palestinian infighting, tit-for-tat arrests, obscene language and embarrassing behavior from those who have elected themselves -- or were elected -- to represent the Palestinian people." -
sheltercrow said on Aug 21, 2008....
Subject: Wal-Mart
"The labor rights organization, American Rights at Work, released a video this week of workers turning in a petition signed by more than 60,000 people in support of a formal complaint filed Aug. 15th against apparently illegal electioneering by the multinational retail giant Wal-Mart.
The scandal broke when a Wall Street Journal article earlier this month and subsequent investigations revealed that Wal-Mart had held mandatory employee meetings at which corporate representatives told workers not to vote for Democrats or for Barack Obama." -
sheltercrow said on Aug 21, 2008....
Subject: cluster munitions
"Georgia: Civilians Killed by Russian Cluster Bomb ‘Duds’
More Attacks Confirmed; Unexploded Ordnance Threatens Many
(Tbilisi, August 21, 2008) – Georgian and Russian authorities should take urgent measures to protect the civilian population in Georgian villages from unexploded ordnance left by Russian attacks, Human Rights Watch said today. Human Rights Watch researchers documented additional Russian cluster munitions attacks during the conflict in Georgia, refuting Russia’s earlier denials that it used the weapon." -
crybabylu said on Aug 21, 2008....
shelter----that's lot to think about! -
sheltercrow said on Aug 21, 2008....
Subject: disenfranchised voters
"According to the non-partisan League of Women voters, some 21 million Americans do not have the type of photo identification required by the most draconian types of polling-place photo ID restrictions that are now being pushed - by hook and by crook - in states across the country. Among that group, some 25% of African-Americans, 18% of Americans over 65, 10% of the 40 million Americans with disabilities, 15% of low-income voters and untold numbers of voting-aged college students who reside in states other than where they may have valid drivers' licenses would have difficulty voting under such laws. (You may add to the Republican enemies list: married women, hurricane victims and those suffering from palsy, if you like.)
With that in mind, the Republicans have stopped at nothing, in order to see such laws passed wherever possible, and otherwise enforced nonetheless even where such poll restrictions have been found by the courts to be illegal and/or unconstitutional.
An unprecedented decision by the now rightward-slanted US supreme court earlier this year, allowed such a law to stand in Indiana. The result: the disenfranchised in the state's May primary election included college students and nuns in their 80s and 90s from St Mary's Convent (one of the "nonagenarian hooligans" kept from her right to vote, was 98 years old) and vets of multiple foreign wars, not to mention those who simply didn't bother to show up, since they knew they'd not be allowed to vote. All of that following the state of Indiana's own admission in the court case that they were unable to document a single case of voter fraud in the state's history that would have been prevented by their new voter-suppression law.
The supporters of such laws, however, argue that it's easy to get one of the free IDs that Indiana offers. Fact is, it's not easy at all, and those supposedly free IDs can get rather expensive. And the same effort is underway in other states as well.
In Missouri, for instance, a state regarded by the McClatchy News Service as "Ground Zero", in 2006, for the GOP's voter disenfranchisement effort, a man was arrested while legally voting two weeks ago during a state primary election. He was sent to jail because he offered two different pieces of perfectly legal ID, but none that the poll workers at his polling place wanted to accept. That, even after the state's supreme court found draconian photo ID restrictions to be unconstitutional there.
In the same state in 2006, not long after the state court's decision, the secretary of state herself (a Democrat), responsible for enforcing the election laws there, was told three times as she was trying to vote that she needed to present a photo ID. Of course she didn't, and has some familiarities with the law. But that didn't stop them from trying anyway, even as Missouri has some 200,000 voters who could, according to the secretary of state's own numbers, be kept from exercising their legal franchise under such laws." -
sheltercrow said on Aug 21, 2008....
Subjects: Pentagon link, Douglas Feith, Vice President Cheney, CIA, forged letter
In an Aug. 8 article in The American Conservative magazine, former CIA officer Philip Giraldi said the bulk of Suskind’s claim – that a forged letter was produced linking Iraq to al-Qaeda – is correct but a “number of details are wrong,” including the CIA’s role.
Giraldi said “an extremely reliable and well placed source” told him that Richer and Maguire were not involved.
“The Suskind account states that two senior CIA officers Robert Richer and John Maguire supervised the preparation of the document under direct orders coming from Director George Tenet. Not so, says my source,” Giraldi wrote.
Giraldi added that “Tenet is for once telling the truth when he states that he would not have undermined himself by preparing such a document while at the same time insisting publicly that there was no connection between Saddam and al-Qaeda.
“Richer and Maguire have both denied that they were involved with the forgery and it should also be noted that preparation of such a document to mislead the media is illegal and they could have wound up in jail.”
Giraldi claimed the letter was prepared by former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, who operated a top-secret shop inside the Pentagon known as the Office of Special Plans that exaggerated the Iraqi threat and provided the White House with bogus information about links between Iraq and al-Qaeda.
The shop, operating out of the Pentagon, was set up by then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld with the goal of laying the groundwork for a pre-emptive military strike against Iraq.
In his article, Giraldi said Vice President Cheney, “who was behind the forgery, hated and mistrusted the Agency and would not have used it for such a sensitive assignment.”
“The Pentagon has its own false documents center, primarily used to produce fake papers for Delta Force and other special ops officers traveling under cover as businessmen,” Giraldi wrote.
“It was Feith’s office that produced the letter and then surfaced it to the media in Iraq. Unlike the Agency, the Pentagon had no restrictions on it regarding the production of false information to mislead the public. Indeed, one might argue that Doug Feith’s office specialized in such activity.” -
sheltercrow said on Aug 21, 2008....
Subject: Zogby Polls
The "Loopy" Zogby Polls
By David Moore
http://www.pollster.com/blogs/the_loopy_zogby_polls.php
All pollsters, it seems, eventually find themselves with what Andy Kohut once referred to as "loopy" results. His comment was about the Gallup polls in the 2000 election, though in September 2004, Pew experienced such results itself, and of course several polls this campaign season have produced inexplicable or "wrong" numbers, as indicated by the subsequent primary election vote counts.
This time, it's Zogby's turn to confuse the masses. His latest Reuters/Zogby poll, based on a sample of 1,089 "likely voters" drawn from listed telephone numbers, conducted Aug. 14-16, 2008, shows McCain over Obama by 46% to 41%.
Two days earlier, Zogby reported substantially different results. His online poll (of self-selected people who want to be part of his Internet polling sample) of 3,339 "likely voters," conducted Aug. 12-14, showed Obama with a three-point lead, 43% to 40%.
By Zogby's own calculation of the margins of error of each poll, the difference between the two polls in McCain's support (46% in the later telephone poll vs. 40% in the earlier online poll) is statistically significant. The difference in Obama's support (41% vs. 43% respectively) would not be statistically significant. Still, the 8-point difference in the margin of McCain's lead would be significant - a McCain 5-point lead vs. an Obama 3-point lead in the earlier poll.
If we believe both polls, the period of Aug. 13-14 must have been a real bummer for Obama and an electoral high for McCain. Whatever it was that caused millions of voters to "change" their minds and gravitate toward the Republican candidate in the two-day period, however, escaped my notice. Perhaps others have been more observant.
Of course, there are reasons to discount both polls. Zogby has long been known for refusing to use sound methods in designing his samples. The use of only listed telephone numbers, and the self-selected samples of voters in his online surveys, are the two most salient problems. Still, his last pre-election polls often come close to the actual election results, and many news media outlets regularly publish his results.
Regardless of how loopy are Zogby's results, or his sampling methods, his polls contribute to what Kathy Frankovic, in her AAPOR presidential address in 1993,[i] referred to as the "noise and clamor" of the polls. Thus, they're worth noting, if only in disbelief.
[i] Kathleen A. Frankovic, Presidential Address "Noise and Clamor: The Unintended Consequences of Success," Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 57, No. 3 (Autumn, 1993), pp. 441-447. -
sheltercrow said on Aug 21, 2008....
Subject: Why we invaded Iraq
Iraq to Revive Oil Deal With Chilna iht.com — Iraq is on the verge of reviving an 11-year-old contract with China worth $1.2 billion, its largest oil deal since the invasion in 2003, an Oil Ministry official said. The deal sets new terms for an agreement reached between China and Iraq under Saddam Hussein in 1997. Unlike that agreement, which included production-sharing rights, the new one is a service contract, under which China would be paid for its work at the Ahdab oil field southeast of Baghdad but would not be a partner in the profits. -
sheltercrow said on Aug 21, 2008....
Subject: Are You a NeoCon?
Are You a NeoCon?
by Grant Lawrence
www.opednews.com
Unfortunately a lot of you dear readers may be getting confused on just what a NeoCon is and what they believe in. You might be getting a NeoCon confused with a conservative or a libertarian. Or, god forbid, you may actually be a NeoCon. So to clear the issue up a bit, I have devised this short and simple test so you can see if you might qualify as a NeoCon. Answer Yes or No
[...] -
bluegum said on Aug 21, 2008....
a little while back i entered a web site to look at a connection to jay donnell and the security i use alerted me to a risk of being on that site.and yesterday the same alert flashed on my pc whenever i looked at a comment to my post. did others experience this ''just wondering''..things seem fine now.blue. -
sheltercrow said on Aug 21, 2008....
Subject: Power Assisted Toilets and Saving Water
Save 8,000 Gallons of Water per Year by Flushing a Power Assisted Toilet
Monday August 11, 2008 | Bob's Home Repair Blog
By Bob Formisano, About.com Guide to Home Repair
Few things are worse than a low-flow toilet that will not flush. Fortunately, the advancement in technology of the pressure assisted toilet has now enabled super low volume toilets that both work (a nice feature) and save even more water than early 1.6 gallon per flush toilets (required since 1992).
These new power assist toilets use as little as 1.1 gallons per flush and can save up to 8,000 gallons of water per year for a family of four over a 1.6 gallon per flush toilet.
And if you have an older style toilet that uses 3.5 to 5 gallons per flush, well the water savings with a power assisted toilet will, well, blow you away! -
sheltercrow said on Aug 21, 2008....
Pop-Ups Fake Security Alerts
Pop-ups try to fake users into downloading 'security software,' Trend Micro says
JUNE 13, 2007 | Next time you get a pop-up that alerts you to security troubles on your machine, beware.
There's been a surge in rogue anti-spyware applications, according to researchers at Trend Micro. The volume of these threats has jumped 500 percent -- from 2 to 10 percent of all infections Trend Micro has detected via its free HouseCall scanning service. The researchers say 10 percent of all new computers get infected by these rogue programs within the first 24 hours.
The latest attacks -- mainly aimed at less technically savvy home users -- use fraudulent security software as a lure, says George Moore, threat researcher for Trend Micro. It's a combination of social engineering and crafty pop-ups posing as Windows alerts. "Pushing fraudulent security applications is becoming increasingly popular."
Attackers can make anywhere from $30 to $80 a victim by selling them phony security tools, he says. "It looks, feels, and acts like legitimate software."
So far, it's mostly a money-making scheme, rather than a spam or bot-herding exercise. But the bad guys end up with your credit card information, so it's actually more dangerous. "They use several ways to get onto the machine -- through silent installs on emails, Google ads, IM, hacked MySpace pages, and fake video codecs that install the rogue application," he says.
The attackers are using hacked Web servers -- including some college sites -- to distribute their code, and they employ "bleeding-edge" Windows exploits as well, Moore adds. "I've seen some Websites where [rogue code] was elaborately written so it looks like a program on your local machine is saying your machine is infected." All it takes is for the user to click on a button to "clean" up the machine, and it becomes infected.
Moore says there are multiple gangs behind the rogue anti-spyware. One recent case came to a head with a class action lawsuit against WinFixer, which allegedly created dozens of these applications. The best defense is to be sure you have a legitimate security app running on your machine -- most of these tools can detect these so-called freeloader or parasite programs.
— Kelly Jackson Higgins, Senior Editor, Dark Reading -
sheltercrow said on Aug 21, 2008....
Beware of fake Microsoft security alerts
With Patch Tuesday coming up, spammers are sending out fake security updates with links to malicious Trojan software
By Robert McMillan, IDG News Service
June 08, 2007
With Microsoft's monthly patch release expected on Tuesday, scammers are sending out fake security bulletins that attempt to install malicious software on victim's computers.
The e-mail messages claim to describe a "Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer" that fixes a critical security flaw in the browser. It comes with a link entitled "Download this update."
When users click on this link, they are taken to a server that attempts to install malicious software known as Trojan-Downloader.Win32.Agent.avk.
This Trojan software then attempts to reach out to other computers on the Internet in order to install more programs on the victim's computer.
The SANS Internet Storm Center received its first and only report of the scam on Thursday night, but a second sample has also been posted to the Chinese Internet Security Response Team blog.
SANS volunteer Lenny Zeltser believes that the criminals behind this scam may be gearing up for more activity. The trojan looks for three different servers, and two of them have domains that haven't yet been registered. He suspects the authors of the scam may be planning to register those domains before embarking on a more widespread campaign.
The two e-mail samples contained obvious errors that would be caught by technically savvy users. For example, although the patch Zeltser examined claimed to have been issued in June 2007, it was entitled MS06-4 instead of the more-plausible MS07-004.
Still, these scams need to fool only a small percentage of victims in order to be successful, said Zeltser, information security practice leader at Gemini Systems in New York. "You wonder, does it really matter that there are these strange discrepancies in the way the fake security alert is written," he said. "People who would notice probably would be the kind of people who wouldn't click on the link."
Another tip-off: Microsoft does send out notification e-mail when it publishes security bulletins, but the links in these alerts take users to the bulletins themselves, not to executable downloads -
crybabylu said on Aug 21, 2008....
blue---I haven't experienced that. -
crybabylu said on Aug 25, 2008....
we have had three funerals in three weeks. a depressed person such as myself, has a great deal to contend with, just dealing with one, but three has been a bit much!
1. sister
2. daughter's church----pastor's husband.......(she has a woman pastor)
3. brother's mother in law, also our pastor's mother.
We are a close-knit group in our church. Two families mainly make up our congregation. Our family, and our brother's wife's family. It has been a sad week at the passing of my sister-n - law's mother, .....we bury her today....
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papajack said on Aug 25, 2008....
It's been rough, alright, I hope this is the last of the funerals for awhile! -
averagejoe said on Aug 25, 2008....
we are going too, and will see you there. -
crybabylu said on Aug 27, 2008....
a lot has happened since then, are you aware of what is going on with papajack?
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