NRBQ:
http://youtu.be/O-vJbQ2IKTA
Author: susie
Wavelength
Van the man:
http://youtu.be/GilHDgGU4Bs
On the beach
I knew that traveling the day before the Mercury retrograde was tempting fate, and sure enough, my GPS stopped working. At all. So I had to stop at a very crowded store to buy another one (that took about 45 minutes). I also picked up a half-dozen Lean Cuisines, but when I got here, I found the half-size refrigerator doesn’t have a freezer compartment. I had to nuke them all so I could keep them in the fridge for a few days. Then I had problems with the hotel wifi (I kept getting bumped of). But no biggie!
Here, enjoy some Neil:
http://youtu.be/CKgj1FNToWY
In my room
Beach Boys:
http://youtu.be/1fQT-GjKlLw
Dock of the bay
Otis Redding:
Change of scenery
I’m on the 27th floor, and from here, you can see just what folly it is to keep building on these barrier islands.
Today I’m at the beach, courtesy of my best friend and her husband. I don’t have any more vacation time, so they arranged to have me use their timeshare at the beach. So even if I have to work, I’ll still be able to look at the ocean! (Plus, hot tub and heated pool, so there’s that.)
Don’t worry, I’ll take pictures.
Conspiracy theory
I really don’t think there’s any question that something’s screwy with the JFK assassination. Why are so many of the documents still classified? Anyway, here’s another purported piece of the puzzle:
A former Cuban exile anti-Castro militant told a conference audience Sept. 26 in a blockbuster revelation that he saw accused presidential assassin Lee Harvey Oswald with their mutual CIA handler six weeks before the killing and there would have been no anti-Castro movement in Cuba without the CIA funding.
Antonio Veciana, the acknowledged leader of the Alpha 66 assassination squad of Cuban exiles in the early 1960s, made the statements in a dignified but emotion-laden manner at this year’s major conference analyzing the Warren Commission report on murder of President John F. Kennedy Nov. 22, 1963 in Dallas. Alpha 66 is alleged to have tried to kill Cuban leader Fidel Castro on two occasions, but Veciana, a onetime certified public accountant for a wealthy Cuban in the years before the revolution, has never been been charged with an attempt.
David Atlee Phillips. Separately, the general counsel of the last major government investigation into the killing issued a statement saying the CIA had deceived him and the rest of the public during the late 1970s inquiry into the validity of the Warren report. Former House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) General Counsel G. Robert Blakey issued the statement during the conference Sept. 26-28 organized at the Bethesda Hyatt Regency Hotel in Bethesda, MD by the Assassination Archives and Research Center (AARC).
Veciana said he is convinced the CIA organized the president’s murder and that he saw Oswald meeting with a CIA official in Dallas because Veciana arrived at his meeting fifteen minutes too early. Veciana said he believes Oswald was a CIA operative whom the agency decided to blame for a killing it organized in a complex plot.
You know what I really hate about Republicans?
They make it so hard not to hate them:
My reporting on the Michigan Republican Party’s odious mailer encouraging people to call the phone of the ailing mother of Democratic candidate for Michigan’s 61st House district John Fisher has gotten LOTS of attention. It’s had thousands and thousands of views and the cross-posted version at Daily Kos has given it national exposure. It’s been picked up by other sites, as well, including Raw Story, Wonkette, and others.
Fisher’s opponent, Republican Kalamazoo County Commissioner Brandt Iden, issued a statement that stops very short of repudiating or condemning the mailer, saying, “Obviously, as you know, it was not sent out by our campaign. I don’t condone negative campaign tactics and it’s not something my campaign has done or anticipates doing. I hope Mr. Fisher would do the same.”
Why he would suggest that Mr. Fisher, a pastor, “would do the same” is perplexing. There’s been nothing like this coming from the Michigan Democratic Party or Fisher’s campaign.
Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to play football
A Long Island high school football player died after colliding with another player during a game Wednesday evening, authorities said.
Tom Cutinella, a 16-year-old junior at Shoreham-Wading River High School in Shoreham, was pronounced dead at Huntington Hospital after collapsing on the field during the third quarter of a varsity football game at John Glenn High School in Elwood, according to a statement from school district superintendent Steven Cohen.
We’re all screwed
I picked up my work laptop yesterday because it was so slow, it was impossible to use with any reasonable speed. My computer repairman told me it was clogged up with viruses. He said Norton sucks, and said the free anti-virus program I use is the one he prefers (AVG). He warned that it was basically impossible to avoid them if you spent much time online — he compared them to potholes. He advised me to be vigilant about updating Java, Flash, and Adobe, because their vulnerabilities were the most popular point of entry for malware and viruses. That’s why I have a backup service — you never know when you’ll need it.
Oh, and by the way, did I mention tomorrow is the beginning of the Mercury retrograde?
Karsten Nohl demonstrated an attack he called BadUSB to a standing-room-only crowd at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas, showing that it’s possible to corrupt any USB device with insidious, undetectable malware. Given the severity of that security problem—and the lack of any easy patch—Nohl has held back on releasing the code he used to pull off the attack. But at least two of Nohl’s fellow researchers aren’t waiting any longer.
Caudill and Wilson reverse engineered the firmware of USB microcontrollers sold by the Taiwanese firm Phison, one of the world’s top USB makers. Then they reprogrammed that firmware to perform disturbing attacks: In one case, they showed that the infected USB can impersonate a keyboard to type any keystrokes the attacker chooses on the victim’s machine. Because it affects the firmware of the USB’s microcontroller, that attack program would be stored in the rewritable code that controls the USB’s basic functions, not in its flash memory—even deleting the entire contents of its storage wouldn’t catch the malware.
But he (Karsten Nohl) warned that even if that code-signing measure were put in place today, it could take 10 years or more to iron out the USB standard’s bugs and pull existing vulnerable devices out of circulation. “It’s unfixable for the most part,” Nohl said at the time. “But before even starting this arms race, USB sticks have to attempt security.”