Turf Wars

1. Recently we posted here about the FBI wreaking havoc by seizing servers from a hosting company.
2. We also commented that the FBI was likely a greater threat to the internet than was LulzSec.
3. LulzSec has disbanded, having caused all the trouble they thought they could without getting caught.
4. The FBI doesn't take competition lightly - they were behind the arrest of the autistic chat host in England, and now they've raided the home of a woman in Iowa.
5. Interestingly, they were looking to have her help infiltrate LulzSec using the information she had on the group which was harvested from LulzSec leaks and Google searches!

The lesson is clear, don't get the FBI mad at you or they'll round up people whom they think know more than they do and make them help get you.

Posted by Procrustes 17

Truth Decay

1. Fluoride has been in America's drinking water since 1951
2. Standardized test scores have been declining in America since 1953
3. Tooth decay rates have been unchanged since 1949
4. Fluorine has the highest electron affinity of any element in the periodic table, sporting an electronegativity of 3.98 and a cubic crystal stucture.

With all these verified facts, it's astonishing to realize that there has been essentially no investigation of the actual effects of this highly corrosive element's introduction into our drinking water.
It seems likely that, in a burst of irony, local governments trying to save money may completely undermine the federal government's program of dosing its citizens with this highly toxic element. We can only wait and see if bad economic times lead to more freedom from forced medication.


Posted by Listener 43

Parsing the Prez

"America, it is time to focus on nation-building here at home," said president 0bama in his address regarding pulling troops out of Afghanistan.

A few points might be helpful in translating this for normal people:

• No, this doesn't mean that he doesn't realize that we already have a nation here; it means he doesn't like the nation that we already have here.
• Remember that he promised to "fundamentally transform" America when running for President; this is likely his realization that he isn't likely to get reelected, so this next year and a half will be all the time he has to pull down the current structures and rebuild America in his own image.
• Europe hasn't fully imploded yet, so he can still point to his friends as examples of mature folks who don't treat rich people as well as poor people. Once Greece defaults and takes Italy with it, he knows he's going to have an even tougher time convincing anyone that his new way forward is anything but a rabbit-hole to insolvency and serfdom.

So what he said is, if you like these United States of America, too bad for you.

Posted by Pygmalion 56

FBI (Feds Bothering the Internet)

1. The FBI took a web server based on a legal warrant.
2. Somehow the FBI were unable to determine which server contained the data covered by their warrant.
3. The FBI took a bunch of other servers without a warrant.
4. The sites and businesses hosted on those servers are offline until backups can be activated or the servers are returned.

In spite of the fact that LulzSec is a clear threat to normal folks on the internet, it appears that the FBI may be a bigger threat overall.

Posted by Procrustes 17

SETI and Timing

1. SETI took their array offline back in April - supposedly due to lack of funds.
2. Just at this time, astronomers were discovering vast numbers of habitable planets.
3. These planets are largely in our general galactic neighborhood.
4. SETI will be bringing their array back online shortly.

Why this timing? What could have been happening during this outage?
Clearly this must be a case of coordination rather than coincidence - the question is:
Who would benefit from such an orchestrated down-time?

Expect more revelations in the near future as our Area 51 observation post will be working around the clock as we seek the answers to the questions we don't dare ask with echelon always listening in.

Posted by Listener 43

Parsing the Feds

parse -

transitive verb

2: to examine in a minute way : analyze critically

Our federal financial types are telling us that if we don't raise the debt limit so we can borrow more money, then we'll have to default on our current obligations. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner says that interest rates would spike, stock and home values would sink, savings and investment would dry up, jobs would disappear, businesses would fail, and everything from tax refunds to troops' salaries would go unpaid.

Here's the translation for normal people:

We owe too much right now, so we'd better borrow some more.

It's interesting that paying down debt apparently hasn't occurred to anyone in DC.

I wish I could run my household like that. Of course, I wish I could tell my employer how much more he has to pay me every year as well.


Posted by Pygmalion 56

The Ice Age is Coming, Baby!

1. All the latest information indicates that planet Earth is headed for another Ice Age:
   
   • Sunspot activity is down and declining - just google Maunder Minimum
   • Solar magnetic fields are declining in strength - by more than fifty gauss!
2. In Ice Ages past, there is evidence that earlier humans were able to move to non-glaciated areas by boat or walking or other means of transportation.
   
   • It's widely accepted that the Salutrean people sailed along the ice front across the North Atlantic.
   • They settled in Maryland and Virginia - avoiding the ice that covered all of Great Britain and so forth.
3. The Clovis people in North America were those Salutrean guys, and they got partially creamed by another mini-Ice Age.
   
   • Their descendents were the Folsom people, who learned to make spear tips and whatnot from their Clovis forebears.
   • The Folsom people found themselves nearly imprisoned by Ice down in New Mexico and such.
4. The big difference between them and us is:
   
   • They had lots of unoccupied and wide-open areas full of prey and berries for new homelands.
   • Where we gonna go? We already have all the good places filled, and only farmers know how to make food now, not normal people.
5.  When the Ice Age hits, ice skating on the Thames will only be fun for so long.
   
• Then it's fighting to keep the Polar Bears on the other side of Hadrian's Wall or the Watling Street. After not that much longer, it will be the Maginot line all over, baby! 
• Where can we get coffee when there's no place warm to grow it?
  GLOBAL CATASTROPHE!

All true facts are welcome - just look them up and share!

Posted by Procrustes 17

Another Agency to Police the Internet?

You've probably already heard by now that the largest ad agency - Group M - is going to stop putting its ads on sites with pirated content.
That's right, these Mad Men are going to try to stop the free flow of information that's the whole raisin d'etre of the world wide web!

You're probably wondering how they plan to do this, right? I am too. After all, the single smartest company in the world - Google (also the largest force for letting everyone know everything that there is) can't tell who has the rights to what content without the legitimate owners actually telling them, so how are these chumps going to do it?

As far as anyone can tell so far, they're just making a list of sites that they think are the bad guys and they're putting them on a 'don't buy' list so they won't buy ads from those sites on the list even if they make sense for their clients' needs for reaching the audiences that visit these sites to see the content they have there that nobody really knows if it's illegal anyway.

Of course apart from making themselves the police of copyright on the internet, they're also making themselves the financial executioners of the internet by denying some potentially legitimate sites the money they are trying to earn by giving their visitors what they want in terms of content and so forth. By taking away funding from these sites, they're going to destroy the free flow of information that has been the goal and glory of the internet since Tim Berners-Lee first made it happen for all of us (sorry Al Gore - it wasn't you, baby!).

Naturally we still have to wonder how they're planning to monitor all these sites to see what's what and what's where and so forth.
We have to wonder who will decide who is a pirate.
We have to wonder who will be told about these guilty-before-even-being-charged allegations.

I don't know about you, but I think it might be wise to let this bunch of madmen know that we're not going to take this all lying down, and that we want to find our content where we find it and that trying to stop the free flow of information on the internet is not only a bad idea as well as kind of un-American, but it's also basically impossible and they'll find out that there are forces out there that will pwn them in a minute if they don't let us have our content.

Posted by Gyro Gearloose

It's all there in the names and numbers

1. The FBI's authorization to go through any garbage they want to examine - without a warrant - was tucked away in section 802, paragraph 11, subsection N of the Patriot Act reauthorization (this is a true fact).
2. Echelon is the project monitoring everything everyone says via email, twitter, facebook, etc.
3. (It's also the way Bill Gates knows who to send money for forwarding his emails, and how Macy's will track you down for forwarding their Marshall Field's cookie recipe.)
4. IPv6 will be giving specificity to who and where all messaging originates.
5. The latest WiFi is 802.11n - does that number sound familiar?

Wonder why some of us only use cables to connect, and are still on IPv4?
Ever wonder what happened to IPv5?

Exactly. It's all there in the names and numbers, if you'll just look. There is no evidence to the contrary, and if there were, that would be a bit suspicious.

Posted by Listener 43

Sony is about to Smurf us all

1. Smurfs have been linked to all the major flavors of socialism, from Marxist/Leninist communism to Fascism.
2. Sony has planted rootkits on their customers' PCs to track their media activity.
3. Sony is planning worldwide Smurf day to plug their 3D Smurf movie.
4. Smurfs were created by some Belgian guy.
5. Brussels is where the EU has its HQ, steadily dismantling any semblance of democracy and local self-rule across Europe.
   

Is there some kind of mind control project is under way at Sony HQ? They want people to dress as those frigging blue creatures on June 25.
It seems clear that there is something sinister going on here, and no amount of corporate denials will suffice to clear Sony's name.

I'd rather scratch glass than turn blue!

Posted by Listener 43

IP v6 is on the way - with Big Brother

You've probably all heard by now about the next great version of the IP addressing scheme call IP v6. We've already run out of our current IP addresses, so everyone is having to take turns on the internet - sharing the same addresses is like the party lines so many oldsters will tell you about when you complain that you only have one cell phone and it's always getting used for both business and personal calls and that just doesn't seem efficient, so you should get more phones and phone numbers to keep everything clear and they'll tell you that they used to share a phone number with Old Lady Magillicuddy down the block and they got by just fine and you can too, and you should like it.

Anyway, IP v6 is supposed to be set up so it will have more than enough addresses for every device owned by each and every person in the world (Yes, that's including India and China, bub!) to be assigned a static IP address, meaning one that doesn't change, it's always the same number, kind of like your phone number doesn't change when you hang up to make room for the next person to make a call.


This all sounds great, right? Sure it does - I want my own numbers for all my devices, and I don't want to share them with some twit down the road or in the next county or in the next country for that matter. It seems like a no brainer on the face of it, until you go over it with ay fine-tuned comb like I have done so.


What's the problem with this scheme? (Yes, I really do mean to call it a scheme, just read on, pal!)


Here's where we're going to run into problems where angels fear to tread. Having a single number for each item - and having it connected to a particular person also - means that it will finally be possible for folks in the know to be tracking any individual's activities in cyberspace.


I don't know about you, pal, but when I want to do some recreational web surfing, I don't need anyone else to know about it. It doesn't really matter if it's my bank following me, my squeeze looking over my virtual shoulder, my friendly public servants trying to figure out just what I "need" them to do for me, or the NSA trying to figure out just what that steganographic eye candy at the bottom of my emails is really all about.


IP v6 - a Good Idea? I don't think so, and neither will you when you see the black helicopters tracing IP traffic back to you.

Posted by Gyro Gearloose

The Colonel and Area 51

1. Area 51 is where alien technology is housed.
2. Area 51 has a giant KFC logo in the desert.
3. KFC had to change its name because they don't sell chicken any more.

So just what are they selling at KFC?
Sources indicate that it's now vat-grown "chicken" units, genetically engineered to look like pieces cut from actual terrestrial chickens, but cheaper, easier to distribute, store, and fry.

It all makes sense, and there's no way to prove or disprove it, so it must be true.

Posted by Listener 43