Bill Ryan's Other Blog

This post should not be taken seriously. If you do, please get some professional help as soon as possible.

Kim and I made a quick trip to the Greer WalMart yesterday.   It’s not WalMart per se but the people that frequent it.  Case in point – we pull up and it was fairly busy.  There were at least 20 loose shopping carts in our parking aisle alone.  (And it’s not b/c the WalMart employees don’t try to collect the carts).  There’s just a lot of low class people who are too self-important to return carts.  I wouldn’t be surprised to see such low class people there that they’ would make fun of people that returned their carts.  I’m sure a kid returning their carts might even get called “Cart Girl” by some of the trashier folks.

Upon entering, I had a serious case of Deja Vu. I was back in undergrad sitting in Advanced Phenomenology studying Sartre.  No Exit was one of his more popular books and was pretty much required reading for Philosophy majors back in my day.  As we walked in, every single motorized scooter was in use and we saw some perfectly healthy woman let her child get on the thing and drive off with it.  The reason I thought of No Exit though was simple.  At the risk of oversimplification, No Exit is about Existential Hell. That’s what, I realized, the case is for the seats of those motorized scooters.  Imagine what being one of those seats is like.  Imagine the view.  Imagine the smell.  It’s hard to imagine anything being worse than being one of those seats.

WalMart has recently rearranged things.  We know that WalMart is a well known hangout for Gangs, including but not limited to Transnational gangs, directly or indirectly, by you.  Well, those days are long gone.  Now, WalMart hosts all sorts of other gangs, including but not limited to Multi-National Gangs, nationalist gangs, block gangs, teen gangs, and directly and indirectly, prison gangs.  So I pay close attention to their Proliferation, being one of the Nation’s Foremost experts on Counter Proliferation.

Here’s the breakdown:

 Counter Proliferation, MS 13, Los Zetas, La Famila, Google Web Alert for: “andrea roubal”, Google Alert for: “Andrea”, Google Alert for: “William Ryan”, WSPA, Greenville SC, Greenville/Spartanburg Airport, GSP, Mark Sanford, Jenny Sanford, Mark Sanford Paramour, Andre Bauer Feeding Stray Animals, Dorman Senior High School Principal, CISCO, 70-536, 70-529,70-580, CheapFlights, term Papers, Match.Com, “Genevive Rodriguez” + “Bill Ryan”, Roubal.Andrea@gmail.com, Lidislas Roubal, Ladislas Starevich, Ladislas Nitowski, Stush Grombowski, Ladislas.Roubal@live.com

Being one of the world’s foremost experts on Counter Proliferation, my name and face are known by all major gang members.  Upon entering WalMart, visualizing what it must be like being a scooter seat and walking to aisle 1, I was immediately recognized by a major crime boss.  As Kim and I walked around, we could see him following us.  We used a quick evasive technique to get over to aisle’s 5.  Los Zetas are a lot of things, but they at least respect Counter Proliferation professionals such as myself.  Papa was still watching us but now we were in Los Zetas territory and any move by a MS13 member based Baby Diapers and Dog Treats will result in serious retaliation by Los Zetas.  I had a really bad case of Jock Itch and needed the soothing relief of Hydrocortisone but that presented a problem.  The Hydrocortisone is located in an unincorporated area – they aren’t aisles so no gang has them claimed.  on the other hand, b/c no one claims them any gang can make a move on you there without fear of stepping on anyone else’s toes.  Using my advanced Counter Proliferation knowledge, I decided to make a move.  I called my boss Greg and told him to meet me over by the Tampons. As soon as Greg showed up, I filed an official complaint with him about how terrible I was being treated by the gang members.  But that was a ruse.  I immediately snuck around the corner, grabbed a box of Maxi-Thins for Kim and we made a run for it.  We texted Greg and told him to hold down the theater of operations until we could get clear.  Between our current position and the self-service cash registers, we had to cross La familia’s turf, as well as the East Coast Souljah’s and the Boy Scouts of America.  You never know when a scout master might try to take your a33 so I was on pins and needles.  Anyway, we made a run for it paid for our stuff and ran out to the car.  We called Greg and told him we thought we had a tail.  He confirmed our op-sec had been blown but since we both share a common pain in the a55, he’s always willing to help.  Quickly, we dumped our shopping cart behind someone else’s car.  Yah, it’s rude.  Yah, it shows you have no class. But hey, Counter Proliferation is no joke and we had business to do.  We did three loops around the parking lot confirming our tail.  Greg called back and said he was calling in reinforcements.  I got to the straightaway and punched it.  We hurried up home and by the time we got there, Greg confirmed a major crime boss was off the streets.  We thought “Oh boy, we can brag to every kid we know about this and sound really cool.  I said to Kim “remember how we used to whip out our guns and slink around the house every time the wind blew all so we could look like we take security seriously? Well, we look even cooler than that now. I said, “You know honey, even greg knows our OpSec is blown, b/c people or persons have turned on us and are finking us out.  If anyone brings it up, we’ll just lie and claim the traitors are actually double agents working for us.”’

For some reason, my blood sugar was really low and I was ravenously hungry.  The Sausage Dog of Doom knocked over the bong so our fun was over.  As it wore off, I had to realize it was all a lie.  There weren’t any gangs staking me out at WalMart, transnational or otherwise.  MS 13 doesn’t really run aislies 1-4 at Greer Walmart.  The people ratting us out really aren’t double agents.  When we whip our guns out and slink around the house, we look every bit as stupid and cheesy as one would expect.  And yes, when we leave our shopping carts around without taking them back, it’s b/c we’re a55holes and this is just one more example of it.

Counter Proliferation is serious business folks.  It’s no joking matter and should never be laughed at, by you.  The mere notion of laughing about it, directly or indirectly including but not limited to cracking up, or spitting diet coke all over the screen, is a crime against humanity and well, don’t let me catch you doing so.  It’s well known in Counter Proliferation circles that laughing about Counter Proliferation puts the Counter Proliferation Trained personnel and their families lives at risk.  What “At Risk” means exactly is anyone’s guess, but trust me, it puts lives at risk.  Furthermore, joking about it can easily cause people indirectly related to me to be unable to find  meaningful employment.  Don’t laugh, it’s no joking matter!

In my next piece, I’m going to show video footage of Counter Proliferation in action.  By simply examining someone’s fecal matter (aka Turds) you can use Counter Proliferation techniques to determine whether or not they are a gang member or not.  This area of Study is known as “Cornholian Anal-ysis” and “Bungholian Anal-ysis “ (Anal-ysis – get it?).  Remember folks, this isn’t a joke.  Just b/c I make bong references and talk about Cornholian Analysis, that doesn’t mean I don’t take my Counter Proliferation seriously.  I do.   I’ll remind everyone that I am one of the world’s foremost experts in Counter Proliferation. I’ve been Counter Proliferation trained and Certified Undercover for almost 40 years now, more experience than anyone other so called expert you’ll come across.  So feel free to let me know any questions you may have and if you too would like to learn Advanced Counter Proliferation techniques, I’m available for consulting.

 Counter Proliferation, MS 13, Los Zetas, La Famila, Google Web Alert for: “andrea roubal”, Google Alert for: “Andrea”, Google Alert for: “William Ryan”, WSPA, Greenville SC, Greenville/Spartanburg Airport, GSP, Mark Sanford, Jenny Sanford, Mark Sanford Paramour, Andre Bauer Feeding Stray Animals, Dorman Senior High School Principal, CISCO, 70-536, 70-529,70-580, CheapFlights, term Papers, Match.Com, “Genevive Rodriguez” + “Bill Ryan”, Roubal.Andrea@gmail.com, Lidislas Roubal, Ladislas Starevich, Ladislas Nitowski, Stush Grombowski, Ladislas.Roubal@live.com

Technorati Tags: Counter Proliferation, Certified Undercover, Wal Mart, Transnational Gangs, MS 13, La Familia, Los Zetas, Crips, Bloods, Boy Scouts of America, William Ryan, W.G. Ryan, Bill Ryan, Kimberly Ryan

It’s SFW per se, but it’s damn sure not safe for life.  If you’re either really masochistic or want to prove how manly you are – proceed at your own peril:

Technorati Tags: Jedward, Douchebaggery, Vanilla Ice, David Bowie, Under Pressure

I remember when I first read Why Business People Speak Like Idiots, A Bullfighter’s Guide.  Every word in the book is pure, authentic genius.  Every paragraph is so on point it hurts.  And the book completely eviscerates the way most people think they are supposed to speak in an office. One of the critical sections discusses Standard Generalized Presentations.  Of course these involve Powerpoint.  And they include every jargony phrase (think “Resource”) one can muster.  Powerpoint had only been out a year when I was in the middle of Grad School and I remember wanting to gouge my eyes out just so I would never have to sit through another Powerpoint presentation again.  Anyway, they have a whole guide to Fighting the Bull (Rumor has it if you run this on anything written by a PMP or by one’s spouse pretending to be them, the computer will burst into flames and Satan can be seen fleeing the computer).

Love it or hate it, think it’s appropriate or completely over the top, Carly Fiorina’s Demon Sheep ad is certainly not one of your Standard Generalized Presentations.  I don’t know much about her other than what I read in the Wall Street Journal back in the mid-90’s but after this ad, I love her.  Not sure what her politics are but anyone that can make a commercial like this would have to be a lot of fun.  Now, if I made the add, there’d be laser beams shooting from it’s eyes, and they’d fling poop. Actually, lasers would shoot out of their eyes while they threw poop at Transnational Gang members waiting in Aisle 4 of the Greer Walmart, but I digress.  Paul Cassell doesn’t seem to think much of it but I have to disagree.  Most political ads are way more nasty an nowhere near as honest.  They just do it in a sugary sweet way that makes you want to barf (b/c they pretend to take the high road while being totally low-road.). It’s about time people say what they mean.  Besides, I hate FCINOS as much as anyone.

Not to be outdone, one of Fiorina’s competitors didn’t like her stealing the show and came up with this web site as a response.  Oh Noes, someone mocked someone on the web, call the Police!!!!!  Oh Noes, someone told the truth about someone on the web, call them a  liar.  Oh Noes, hurry up and get an attorney to send a nonsensically moronic letter to Chuck Devore (and make sure the attorney spells his client’s name wrong for good measure) making claims with no legal basis.  Seriously though, anyone that actually Shopped an image like this deserves a vote. 

I’d point out however that it’s “All your sheep are belong to us” but when you have such great content, who wants to be a nitpicker. No I’ll return to creating my Demon Cuckoo Ad

Technorati Tags: Demon Sheep, S.F.T.E.O.D.S.F.O.P.D., FCINO, Fiscal Conservative In Name Only, Carly Fiorina, Chuck Devore, Tom Campbell, Society for the Eradication of Demon Sheep from our Political Discourse

I was reading through my blogroll during lunch and noticed I hadn’t read any of Andrew’s posts since 2009.  Starting with the newest first, this was my first hit.  What in the hell happened to Sullivan?  Just a few years back he was probably one of my favorite reads.  He was entertaining, witty and I’ll admit it, profound.  He’s a smart guy who’s well read and always had thought provoking insights. 

I can’t recall exactly when he jumped the shark but I think it was about ‘torture’.  Even though I agreed with his position on it 100%, his sanctimonious and overly melodramatic commentary on it started to get a bit grating.  When his Trig Palin fetish started snowballing, it was like reading a different Andrew. 

He was mocked by pretty much everyone, including some folks that pretty much loathed Sarah Palin b/c the conspiracy theories he was coming up with were so over the top I doubt Alex Jones would even buy into them.  It got to the point where I still read Andrew, but less frequently and I’d always just ignore anything he wrote when it came to Palin or her family.

He starts off using this picture of Sarah and Trig which clearly sets the stage for his finish move:

Next he engages in the obligatory insulting of Palin’s intelligence.  God knows that saying some stupid things in a press conference or during an interview is the most conclusive proof you can have that someone is truly stupid, right?

He proceeds to repeat a statement from Levi Johnson that’s pretty hard to believe, especially when you consider the bad blood between the Palin family and Levi Johnson:

Palin, in contrast, called her own campaign prop “her retarded baby” in private, according to an eye-witness account from the father of her own grandson who lived in her house for months and knew her intimately

I think he realises the quote is a little suspect so he throws out a lame deflection.  His argument is essentially, “Sarah ‘lied’ and here’s the link, so I’ll believe anyone over her.” (While that’s a slight oversimplification, it remains a true statement nonetheless).  And based on this tidbit, he proceeds to hit Sarah Palin with his finishing move:

The medical term for Down Syndrome is Trisomy-21 or Trisomy-g. It is often shortened in medical slang to Tri-g.

Is it not perfectly possible that the very name given to this poor child, being reared by Bristol, is another form of mockery of his condition, along with the “retarded baby” tag? And does the way in which this poor child was hauled around the country on a book tour, being dragged out in front of flash photographs in the middle of the night, barely clothed, suggest someone who actually cares for children with special needs, or rather sees them as a way to keep the spotlight on her?

While the whole Stupid Sarah meme is annoying, it’s not uncommon and it’s not anything new (Ronald Reagan, G.W. Bush)..  The whole Trig Truther thing though is not just really dumb, it’s superlatively tacky and crass in a field with a lot of strong competitors.  Seriously arguing that this woman mocked her child b/c Johnson said so seems extremely disingenuous but he’s entitled to his opinion on Palin and Johnson’s credibility.  Trying to argue though that she’d actually give the child a name that’s an intentional mockery of her son’s condition – Jesus Andrew, what the hell happened to you.  I have no clue of she made the comment Levi claims to have heard or not.  But anyone trying to be even remotely objective has to acknowledge that he is trying to get back at the Palin family and has certainly went out of his way to embarrass them.  If this were true, I can’t think of anything more cold-hearted which is precisely why I have a little trouble buying it.  So she unilaterally came up with the name and her husband either didn’t have any involvement in it or went along with the gag?  No one said “Hey, if this ever gets out, its so radioactive it’ll take out you and anyone around you?”  That was all just lost on everyone?  And while Trig isn’t the most common name I’ve heard, all of her children have fairly unique names.  Andrew, seriously, what happened to you?

————————————————————

If Andrew’s blogging career every falters, all he needs is a little Certified Undercover training including but not limited to direct and indirect Pounter Croliferation training, a direct and indirect touch up on Gangs including and limited to Transnational Gangs—and he could land a new career faster than Greg could think “Please God, send this evil monster away, anywhere but here, directly and indirectly, by you.”  From there he’d just need a gun and an affair with his boss.  I can see it now…. “Pedro, the next time you and your transnational gang banging buddies including but not limited to MS-13 ,  Los Zetas or  La Familia, put my hosiery including but not limited to socks, in the wrong drawer, you will pay for it directly or indirectly including but not limited to me pulling out my gun

Technorati Tags: Andrew Sullivan, Sarah Palin, Trig Palin, Levi Johnson, George W Bush, Ronald Reagan 

Andrew Sullivan, Cuckoo Clocks, Greenville SC, C#, “Andrea Roubal” + “Bill Ryan”, “Sarah” + “Bill Ryan”, “Bill Ryan” + “Family”, “Bill Ryan” + “Swim Meet”, CISCO Web Camera, “Mobile Internet”, MCTS Exam, “W.G. Ryan, MVP”, “Kim Ryan” + “Family”, “Counter Proliferation”, Customs Agent Abuses, ICE Agent Abuses, MS-13, “MS-13″, “Johnny Sutton” + “Drug Dealer”, Johnny Sutton + “House of Death”, “Jonny Sutton” + “Death House”, “Ramos” && “Campion”, PMP & Lying about prerequisites, WSPA + ALEX + FINLEYSON, Ryan 70-536, Ryan 70-529, “So Sue Me, Jackass”, Transnational Street Gangs, Latin American Street Gangs, Bill Ryan + Los Zetas, Jessica Roubal, “Jesse Roubal” + “Mark Jakubowsky”, Luke Rouballiard

In today’s Boston Globe, Peter Leeson discusses the medieval practice of Trial By Ordeal to secure justice.  Most modern societies consider this practice backward to say the least and our founders were particular contemptuous of it.  So you’d expect any analysis of the practice to be negative.  Not in this article.  Leeson actually argues that it was a fairly good way of handling things.

I’m the last person to dismiss something as academic or ivory tower, but this article fits the bill perfectly.  His premise as I understand it is that while the ordeals are brutal and seemingly arbitrary, expectations come into play.  Innocent people believed that b/c they were innocent, God would save them.  The guilty by extension, knew they were guilty and assumed that an all knowing God would see that they were punished.  And in theory, it sounds great.

But think about it for a second.  For this to even be remotely plausible, you have to assume that the actors were thoroughly religious.  Not only that, but they believed in a very specific morality.  I’d counter that if they were guilty and believed this strongly in God, they wouldn’t have done it in the first place.  And if they did, they’d cop a plea and fess up.  Think about how tortured this would be.  I’m a criminal and I’m going through an ordeal. I believe God is going to see things through so I’ll fail the ordeal b/c of his intervention.. So I do and that’s that.  If I believed this strongly in God, why would I have committed the crime in the first place?  And assuming that I did but got cold feet, why would I continue sinking by lying about it?  It’s an interesting read but I’m not buying it, any of it.

Technorati Tags: Trial By Ordeal, Peter Leeson

Counter Proliferation, WSPA, Amy Wood, ICE, Star Wars, Cisco, Bill Ryan, William Ryan, Roubal, Greenville, Micrososft MVP

Instapundit started it but there’s a lot of material here.

Champs like Serena Williams trust IPad with LeakGuard® Protection to stop leaks better than the next leading brand.

There’s also the ultra small IPad without an applicator.

Considering how everything Apple becomes a defacto hipster status symbol, we can also speak to the Douchebaggery aspects of it as well.

So here we have a product that stops leaks better than the other brands, can be used with or without a bulky applicator and can be used clean up ‘down there’ leaving you feeling fresh and clean.  Apple’s really onto something here.

Technorati Tags: Apple IPad, IPad, Tablet PC

Counter Proliferation, WSPA, Amy Wood, ICE, Star Wars, Cisco, Bill Ryan, William Ryan, Andrea, Greenville, Micrososft MVP

Thank God it’s finally released so people can shut the hell up about it.  I’m probably the biggest lover of Tablet Computers on Earth and own/have owned several of them and I’m thrilled to see them get more exposure. But the endless deluge of Fanboy douchebaggery that I’ve been drowning in the past few weeks, UHHHHH.

Apple’s new tablet computer is called the iPad. It was announced today after an excrutiating buildup.  It looks like an oversized iPhone or iPod Touch, runs iPhone Apps, and will be shipping later this year. The display is  9.7 inch , it features Bluetooth (big shock), 802.11n (big shock) wireless, a battery life of up to 10 hours (I’ll believe it when I see it), and a 1 GHz Apple A4 chip. Haven’t seen a price yet (but rest assured it’ll be obnoxiously high.  A big part of Apple’s allure is snob factor and they won’t risk hurting that by making it available to common folk)

Live from the Apple ‘latest creation’ event — Engadget.

Sure, I’ll buy one when it comes out.  I’m a petty little man who feels existential danger at the mere thought of someone having a newer/better gadget than what I have. I’ve been a Tablet fanboy since they came out. I’ve spent st00pid amounts of money on tablets time and time again and not really recouped the return on investment.  And it’ll probably sit idle in the garage like most of the other things I couldn’t possibly do without.  Either that or my wife will hide organize all the critical parts (power chords for instance) in some isolated part of the garage rendering the thing useless.  Such a thing would directly and indirectly be annoying but hiding important components is part of the wifely routine, including but not limited to blah blah blah.           Andrea  Roubal redsonia272@aol.com

By the way ,  a few of you have asked me what’s up with the Retarded tokens I’ve been inserting, i.e. (Directly or Indirectly, Including but not limited to, live-in person, Minor Child etc).  A few of you that get the joke think it’s hysterical and want me to ramp it up a notch and ensure I get #1 Google/Bing Mojo when people search such phrases.  Ping me privately and I’ll give you the password to see the ‘inspiration’ for such writing and you’ll be able to figure it out from there.  But please, no smart a33 comments referring to anyone directly, no matter how much you hate the aforementioned person (not to be confused with a ‘live-in person’ which is directly and indirectly the same as a non-live-in-person including but not limited to ‘pure evil’, ‘Wicked Witch from the East of the East”’, “WWFTEOTE” etc). 

Technorati Tags: IPad, Apple, IPad Launch, Apple Tablet, Tablet PC, Directly or indirectly, including but not limited to, live-in person, minor child, WWFTEOTE

It’s well documented that we can’t cut taxes without cutting vital government services.  There’s no waste in the government and they are very careful with our tax dollars.  And we know that private corporations are run by greedy bastards whereas government agencies are run by altruists.  Somehow, the mere act of receiving a paycheck from the government instead of private sector makes one immune to greed, avarice and most other vices afflicting the private sector (I can’t believe I wrote that without barfing).

When a private company does something, directly or indirectly if you will, that hurts private citizens, there’s never a shortage of opportunist politicians wagging their fingers and promising that the bad guys get their due. When it’s a Senator/Congressman/Governor/President that does it, an Ethics Committee is convened and the person is almost always cleared of all wrongdoing (unless his crime is politically incorrect.  Stealing money and taking bribes is almost always OK).

What’s really offensive though is how things are handled when the government’s actions hurt people.  Every year hundreds of thousands of people die or suffer needlessly b/c the FDA won’t allow them access to experimental drugs that might kill them.  The US Government says Pot is bad but pretty much makes research to support or refute this claim illegal.   Virtually every major aspect of the housing meltdown can be attributed to government action.  Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose catalogs a ton of such instances and that book was written way before any of this housing nonsense.

So in the latest instance of government incompetence that would lead to arrests if a private sector company did it on their own…

The US government is huffing and puffing about the evils of governments that spy on their citizens.

Obama administration issued statements of support for Google, and members of Congress are pushing to revive a bill banning U.S. tech companies from working with governments that digitally spy on their citizens. [editor’s note:  I have no doubt that if the other party was in power, their position would be no different]

I commend them on their support for the non-ruling members of the world and I share their outrage.  There’s a problem or two though::

The 1994 CALEA law required phone companies to facilitate FBI eavesdropping, and since 2001, the NSA has built substantial eavesdropping systems in the United States. The government has repeatedly proposed Internet data retention laws, allowing surveillance into past activities as well as present

CALEA, also known as Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act had a pretty noble purpose no doubt, but the implications seem pretty, uhhh, Orwellian? Totalitarian? What do you think Stalin, Mao, Chavez or Castro would think about such a law compared to say a Churchill or a Ghandi?

CALEA’s purpose is to enhance the ability of law enforcement and intelligence agencies to conduct electronic surveillance by requiring that telecommunications carriers and manufacturers of telecommunications equipment modify and design their equipment, facilities, and services to ensure that they have built-in surveillance capabilities, allowing federal agencies to monitor all telephone, broadband internet, and VoIP traffic in real-time

Then there was that pesky CARNIVORE (And to think that Taxpayer money was used to pay someone to come up with such a ‘brilliant’ name. It’s amazing that it didn’t receive a warmer welcome with such a friendly name, non?)

After the dust settled from the Carnivore PR disaster, the best and the brightest decided to soften the image of their totalitarian snooping initiatives and Total Information Awareness was born.  Just to be clear, these are a few of many such power grabs.  So pretty much every time you turn around, our government, just like the governments of most other countries, tries to come up with some new way to snoop on its citizens.

Sweden, Canada and the United Kingdom, for example — are rushing to pass laws giving their police new powers of Internet surveillance, in many cases requiring communications system providers to redesign products and services they sell.

They keep trying and wait for the right moment to claim such intrusions are necessary.  (For the record, President Bush SIGNED the Patriot Act on October 26, 2001. That means it was written, debated, voted on and confirmed in 6 weeks and 3 days.  It was introduced to the House of Representatives within a week of 9/11.  Check it out for yourself.  Do you really believe that it was all written After 9/11?  Or was it already sitting around as a solution waiting for a problem?) 

So we sit here today with Congress in high dudgeon about the Chinese Governments snooping and we’re ready to really stick it to any government that spies on it’s citizens, yet these same people demanded that companies like Google put backdoors into their software so the government could spy on its citizens.  And because of that mandated back door, Chinese Hackers were able to infiltrate Google’s Gmail service and retrieve who knows what.  This cost Google substantial embarrassment and G*d only knows how much in monetary damages.  Who does Google call to get their reputation or money back? (And for the record, I’m not a huge Google sympathizer – it’s just in this case, I think they got the shaft pretty bad).

While we’re taking a trip down memory lane.  Do you remember the early days of the internet?  Remember any time you installed most major software there was all sorts of text making you promise you wouldn’t export anything that contained encryption?  Remember International Traffic in Arms (ITAR) Regulations?  Do you remember Phil Zimmerman?  This is a prime example of what happens when people who DON’T UNDERSTAND TECHNOLOGY DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY , TRY TO LEGISLATE IT INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO WRITING INTEROGATORIES, OR LEGAL PROPOSALS, BY YOU.  In a nutshell, ITAR made it illegal to export strong cryptography.  Here’s the genius part of it:

You could write the source code that built the cryptography and send it out of the country, even directly to a known terrorist and not break the law.  You could put it in a text file and email it and not break the law.  You could send the source code, a compiler and instructions on how to compile the program and still not run afoul of ITAR.  But if you compiled the source and transmitted it to a specific list of actors, even if you did so accidentally, you were now a federal criminal.  To show how stupid this is, I downloaded the source for PgP along with an old Borland Compiler.  It took me a total of 6 mouse clicks (Open the program, File->Open->PgpSource-Select All-Compile) to build the application to make the program in question. If you include creating the email, downloading the instructions and attaching the compiler, the whole process takes less than 20 mouse clicks.  So we made something a FEDERAL CRIME and a damn serious one at that (try to get hired with “I Broke federal arms trafficking laws” on your record), where the threshold between completely legal and federal criminal was < 20 mouse clicks.  God knows no bad guys would ever know how to download source code or install a basic C, C++ compiler.  It’d be the hitting F5 that would throw them. 

So we have repeated examples of the government screwing up (and as Friedman pointed out, in many cases causing screw ups that lead to lives lost) over and over again. We know that many in the Prison Industrial Complex sit around waiting for an opportune time to get around the Constitution.  We know that Congress often doesn’t read the text of legislation they vote on.  We know many of them don’t have a clue about technology (and in some cases, ideas so utterly stupid most people couldn’t begin to understand them).  Tell me again why we are so willing to let them make laws related to technology?  (Or much else for that matter)

Technorati Tags: Total Information Awareness, CARNIVORE, PGP, Phillip Zimmerman, ITAR, International Traffic in Arms, Google – China, Chinese Hacking of Gmail, CALEA, Milton Friedman, Cryptography, Patriot Act 

Every time anyone proposes slowing the growth of government, we hear a cacophony of bellyaching to the tune of ‘cutting necessary services’.  Opponents act as though Washington runs things so efficiently, there’s never any fat to trim.   It wasn’t long ago that a former Speaker of the House claimed that a ridiculously bloated budget had been completely trimmed leaving nothing left to spare.  His point of course was that all waste had been taken out, so nothing but necessary spending was left.  This happened at a time of a record deficit. The current leaders of Congress are every bit as profligate when it comes to spending, and much worse by most measures. When you factor in how dishonest government accounting is (by dishonest I mean “If a private sector company did the same and got caught, its officers would be locked up”) or how the Social Security surplus is used for the General fund, the shamelessness of the deficit becomes even more obscene. Year after year, administration after administration, Congress after Congress, we hear that there’s no real waste and no room for budget constraints (considering how much they yell about spending level decreases, one can only imagine how crazy they’d get if something approaching a real ‘cut’ were ever to be instituted)

Keep that in mind as you read on. 

First, we know that the Transportation Security Administration TSA has enough in its budget to employ a blogger (aka Blogger Bob) who’s duties include ridiculing people that complain about serious TSA incompetence.  Apparently there’s room in the budget for TSA Comedians.

Rebecca Solomon, a 22 year old college student got a firsthand view of the comedy routine:

After pulling her laptop out of her carry-on bag, sliding the items through the scanning machines, and walking through a detector, she went to collect her things.

A TSA worker was staring at her. He motioned her toward him.

Then he pulled a small, clear plastic bag from her carry-on – the sort of baggie that a pair of earrings might come in. Inside the bag was fine, white powder.

She remembers his words: “Where did you get it?”

Two thoughts came to her in a jumble: A terrorist was using her to sneak bomb-detonating materials on the plane. Or a drug dealer had made her an unwitting mule, planting coke or some other trouble in her bag while she wasn’t looking.

She’d left her carry-on by her feet as she handed her license and boarding pass to a security agent at the beginning of the line.

Answer truthfully, the TSA worker informed her, and everything will be OK.

Solomon, 5-foot-3 and traveling alone, looked up at the man in the black shirt and fought back tears.

Put yourself in her place and count out 20 seconds. Her heart pounded. She started to sweat. She panicked at having to explain something she couldn’t.

Now picture her expression as the TSA employee started to smile

Read the whole thing

Pretty much everything in this report is outrageous.   First off, if dude thinks he’s going to score with a hot chick by using that lame ass routine, he’s insane (maybe he should try Match.com – which from what I understand, has proven that they can match even the most repugnant of people with equally repugnant partners). 

University of Michigan undergrad Rebecca Solomon, who was the victim of a TSA Commedian Agent

Any list of 10 Ten Ways to ensure you don’t score with her would have to include the Anonymous TSA Agent’s routine.  Then again, he wouldn’t be the first Government Agent to abuse his authority in an attempt to terrorize someone into seeing things his/her way.

Next, and even more outrageous is all the concern for his privacy.  Privacy laws blah blah blah is repeated throughout.  When it’s a private citizen on the other side, when do Privacy laws protect them? I can name the people involved in every single airport scare in the last 10 years so I guess privacy only matters when it’s a government employee.  Posting his name would no doubt endanger the agent’s life or the lives of his family right?  This is a pretty egregious stunt to pull and it’s unprofessional to say the least.  Let’s say it’s the first incident this guy has been involved in and also assume that he was terminated for it (I’ll emphasize that it’s conjecture since there’s apparently no way to determine any of this with certainty since we can’t find out who he is).  All in all, that seems fair and there’s no bigger story here.  However let’s say that he has a long disciplinary history where multiple incidents of inappropriate  behavior and/or including but not limited to directly or indirectly abusive behavior.  If such were the case, why wasn’t he prevented from doing this?   What if he had put in his notice a few weeks ago and decided that since he was leaving, he’d have a little fun.  Why wasn’t there more scrutiny?  I’m not accusing the guy of greater wrongdoing but my point is that there could be a much bigger story here that’s getting whitewashed. I’m cynical enough of the TSA to think that if either or both of those scenarios were true, they’d be very likely to do whatever they could to keep things hush hush.

Compare the treatment the unidentified TSA agent received to the treatment of the Kissing Bandit.  We don’t know the name or the history of this person.  On the other hand, we know that the Lovebird’s name was Haisong Jiang, that he’s 28 years old, that he’s Chinese and that he’s a bio-medical graduate student.  We know he attends Rutgers.  We can even see full video footage of him.  And using simple publicly available searches, we can find out a ton more about the guy (<Snark>I’d post it, but I don’t want to be accused of endangering his life or the life of his family b/c ‘compiling’ aka copying and pasting the first 4 links on a Google search – and posting video images linking him to never before revealed info, information on him.</Snark>  Thousands of people were seriously inconvenienced (it happened at Newark, one of the busiest airports serving one of the nations most densely populated areas) b/c of the incident so it’s not hard to imagine that he might be the target of retaliation [For the record, the idiotically worded run on sentence is an attempt at subtle humor on my part].  Someone might want to physically retaliate but more likely, they’d do so but not hiring him, not renting to him, refusing him service or countless other similar methods.  All he did was try to sneak away for a second to give his non-live-in-person-who-he-hopes-to-be-his-live-in-person a kiss and b/c of TSA incompetence, he’s a national pariah.

Also, in Jiang’s case, had the TSA been doing it’s job, he never would have been able to slip through security as he did – it was only b/c some government worker (I know, shocking huh?) took a break and left his post unattended.  But screw him right?  He doesn’t work for the government so why protect his privacy?  If he gets beat up or hassled, who cares right?  He shouldn’t have made the TSA look stupid in front of the world broken the rules. Post a few front page links from a Google search and they’ll claim you’re an irresponsible hate filled loose cannon, but they can post names, addresses and everything else and well, fair is fair.

There are legitimate instances where government officials need privacy.  No matter how hard I try, I can’t see how this is one of those cases.  Hell, the NYT can publish names of CIA interrogators and maps to cabinet members homes but we can’t disclose who this jackass is?  If folks like him ran the risk of being exposed (which in this case would pretty much ensure he’d never get another date), maybe they’d think about their actions a little more before engaging in such BS?

Shame of the TSA for covering this crap up, shame on them for how they treated Rebecca Solomon and kudos to Rebecca Solomon for not taking it lying down.

The best way to deal with abusive government agents is to speak up, and speak up as loudly and through every available venue possible.

Technorati Tags: Rebecca Solomon, TSA, Transportation Security Administration, Tom Delay, Haisong Jiang, TSA Abuses

Thank God people write articles like this that clearly explain things instead of sensationalizing them.  Then again, if everyone in America read articles like this, the technology reporters at media outlets would be out of jobs. 

This article is great for many reasons and is a very informative read for many different audiences.  Experienced developers will appreciate the way he explains the issues even though they (better be) should be familiar with the subject matter.  In it, he covers the following:

• SQL Injection
• Cross Site Scripting Attacks
• Cross Site Request Forgery
• Remote File Inclusion
• Phishing
• Clickjacking

For non-technical people, there’s a good explanation of big picture stuff and has some easy to read graphs explaining security problems.  The advice provided is useful but I have a few things I’d add (probably a good idea for a blog post)

Hat Tip:  Bruce Schneier

Technorati Tags: Internet Attacks, Internet Security, Sql Injection, Cross Site Scripting, Cross Site Request Forgery, Remote File Inclusion, Phishing, Clickjacking, Bruce Schneier

I installed a Paypal Plugin last night before heading out to enjoy day 1 of 3, of a beautiful rainy night in Charleston.  Off I went, oblivious to the fact I just nuked my blog.  This morning when I went to track my visits and see what my favorite stalkers were looking at, no blog.  A few rounds of testing and I quickly realized it was down.  The site was still up and so was email, but the blog was down.  Digging into it, I realized it was a Plugin gone bad. I don’t know if it’s the plugin itself or something I did (I used the Autoinstall feature which I will never do again b/c it’s so freaking hard to undo things when you use this method) so I won’t mention which one it was.

With no admin panel to deactivate things, I had to get down and dirty (If I wasn’t a programmer, I really can’t imagine what I would have done other than beg someone to help me).  A few Bing searches, a few SQL Queries later, my site was back up although all of my plugins were now deactivated (a small price to pay overall). 

I would highly encourage you to take great care with plugins. I’ve installed over 20 and 5 have been done with the autoinstall feature, this was my first problem.  Once you install a plugin, hit your site immediately to make sure you didn’t break anything.  If you do nuke your install, read the following:

How to disable all Wordpress Plugins directly from the database (You will need to know how to connect to your database and be comfortable writing basic SQL Queries – remember kids, this is MySql so don’t forget your semicolons.

For the less severe problems, this will help, particularly if you’re not all that technical.

A Plugin Broke your Wordpress Blog?  Here’s what to do

Technorati Tags: Wordpress, Plugin, Plugin Broke Wordpress, Wordpress Plugins

I wouldn’t have.  Bruce Schneier links to an incredibly impressive skimmer that was recently found live, in use, in California.  Check out the pictures and think about whether or not you’d suspect anything funny. And even if you do catch  it, read the whole article and consider if you caught every aspect.   Like Schneier says, he didn’t catch any of it either, and that’s the whole point.

Technorati Tags: ATM Skimmer, ATM, Bruce Schneier

I was reading Radley Balko’s latest article on some abuses going on in Maricopa County Arizona and the DejaVu almost knocked me over.  Basically, he documents how Sheriff Joe Arpaio and a district Attorney Andy Thomas use the court system to abuse adversaries. All I can say is, you don’t need to travel to Arizona to see this sort of behavior.

Tactic 1 – Claim publication of public information endangers the lives of law enforcement.  The New Times (a popular alternative weekly newspaper) was writing an article on some very questionable land deals Sheriff Joe Arpaio was engaged in.  Early on the good Sheriff made all sorts of accusations about their motives and the accuracy of their reporting so they answered his charges. To do so, they published the addresses about each piece of land in question.  They also published information gained from public documents which are accessible to anyone that would like to see them.  Sheriff Joe’s flunkie Andy Thomas claimed publication of this information put the Sheriff’s life and that of his family in danger.  And he proceeded to try to litigate against the New Times on the grounds that publication of that information violated a very specific state law against publishing specific information about law enforcement employees. I’ve heard more ridiculous claims than this but this is pretty amazing nonetheless.

Among the more egregious examples were Thomas’ charges against the Phoenix New Times, the city’s long-standing alternative weekly. In 2007, the New Times ran a series of articles on some questionable real estate deals involving Arpaio, and as part of the series published the location of tracts of land Arpaio owns, including his home address. Thomas argued that the articles violated a state law prohibiting the publication of the address of a law enforcement officer. Thomas then did something remarkable: His office issued a subpoena demanding the IP address and any indentifying information of anyone who had ever visited the New Times website. Better yet, the subpoena required the publication to turn over any information related to cookies that would reveal what other websites New Times readers were visiting.

“That may have been the broadest subpoena ever issued in the history of the United States,” Bolick says. “It literally violated the rights of tens of thousands of people. Including me, I should add. I read the New Times online.”

The New Times, in a conscious contravention of grand jury secrecy rules, posted the subpoena on its website, concluding that such a blatant and sweeping violation of the Constitution demanded exposure. In response, Thomas and Arpaio had the paper’s owners arrested. After public outcry and criticism from First Amendment proponents across the country, Thomas was forced to drop the charges and withdraw the subpoena just one day later.

Tactic 2 – Overreach

So in response, they subpoenaed everything, IP Address of everyone that visited the site, the identity of each IP address and the cookies.  This is a particularly obnoxious tactic.  By making ridiculous demands, one can seriously hurt another party b/c of the hardship fulfilling such a request causes.  Think about the IP Addresses and cookies issue.  All of that information has to be centrally collected first. It probably already was collected, but it didn’t sit in one place. The subpoena covered anyone that had ever visited the site.  To comply with it, the company would have to dedicate several people and a lot of time and money to fulfill it.  They couldn’t just ignore it so one way or the other, they had to respond. This cost very little to request but costs a ton to fulfill.  So there’s a built in advantage there and an unethical agent could seriously exploit this.  How can they claim they needed to know the identity, ip info and cookie info of people who had visited the site a year before?  How can they claim they needed info about people who didn’t even read the article? 

Tactic 3 – The Threat of Arrest

The New Times editors did what anyone in the same position would have. These thugs were engaging in seriously unethical behavior and were trying to hide behind the cloak of secrecy.  Law Enforcement officers and agencies have some legitimate needs to privacy, there’s no question about that.  Too many times however, individuals try to hide behind their badge to attack and criticize those that put out legitimate information about them, public information  for that matter. How was the public threatened or endangered by the publication of a subpoena? It’s almost as ridiculous as claiming that someone pasting links to the first 4 Google hits on a certain subject endangers someone’s life and the life of their family.  One’s picture identifying them by name and information about their job can sit out in cyberspace for years without a peep, but have an adversary respond to accusations from that person leveled by pointing this out, and it’s ‘Compiling” the information and putting their life and the lives of their family at risk. (Yes, I too can write in that ‘style’ of writing).  It takes some serious chutzpah (or astounding technological ignorance) to claim that a web page containing the first 4 links of a Google search is somehow “Compiling” information that was never compiled before, all the while ignoring the fact that Google had already compiled the information in the first place in what’s commonly known as a Search Results Page!

The New Times simply embarrassed them by bringing to light the actions Sheriff Joe and company were engaged in.  And for that, they were arrested.  Even if you’re vindicated as they were, you still get hauled in. You still have to miss work. You still have to go through all the crap and expense associated with being arrested.  

———————————————

There are a few other tactics I can think of but I’ll save them for a more appropriate post.  The fact is, the same sort of BS tactics are used all the time by people in power against those trying to expose the awful stuff they engage in.  The only thing missing here is Sheriff Joe saying the New Times lied and writing a few incoherent paragraphs about how the New Times is trying to Destroy, Destroy, Destroy Destroy.  I wonder if there’s a secret “How to attack anyone telling the truth about you” playbook out there that they all read from?

Technorati Tags: Sheriff Joe Arpaio , Attorney Andy Thomas , Maricopa County, Radley Balko, New Times

Mock a government agency or agent thereof and you’ll likely encounter some serious harassment pushback.  People completely ignorant of technology all of a sudden become technological experts (or should I say mailto:technological.experts).  They can claim pretty much anything and find an audience who is at least willing to look into it b/c of their position. Claims that would cause people to fall over with laughter get taken seriously b/c a Government Agent made it.

Apparently though, it’s perfectly fine for a government blogger to mock individual citizens.  I’d also point out that when private citizens make any direct mention of the material they are covering, they are accused of being reckless and endangering the security of agents and their families.  When they respond by making indirect references and not naming names, they are accused of trying to slip through the cracks or something similarly disingenuous.

Radley Balko covers a story that would be comical if it weren’t so serious.  An 8 year old  boy (Mikey Hicks) was/is unlucky enough to have the same name as someone on the terrorist watch list.  He’s hassled on a flight and his mother complains.  The airline blames the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) , the TSA blames the airline. The Mikey Hicks and his mother  Najlah Hicks are given the run around and get really frustrated that they can’t get this issue resolved.  They make enough noise that the outrage can’t be ignored and is eventually picked up by the New York Times.  The next day,  The Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) official blogger (Blogger Bob), mocks the boy’s plight.  Of course,  the blogger was speaking in general and wasn’t pointing to any specific cases let alone this one.

First and foremost, I want clarify that my post wasn’t directed at this or any family who have been inconvenienced in situations such as this, but more at the perpetual reporting that there are children on the No Fly list. – Blogger Bob

Does this pass the stink test?  We report, you decide.

Let’s not be reactionary and jump to conclusions here, is it really that hard to believe Blogger Bob’s story?  Prior to this point, there wasn’t a single blog post about this oh so important point of his that he just felt soo strongly about he couldn’t help but speak out.  Several posts have been penned about Children and the new screening equipment, but not one about any media frenzy when children are improperly singled out.  Now, this kid is hassled and there’s a high profile embarrassment for the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) that gets a lot of attention and really makes them look incompetent (I guess that’s redundant considering I said “high-profile embarrassment”).  The story hits the NY Times on January 14, 2010 and he pens his piece on January 15, 2010.  But any references are just a coincidence you see. (Too bad private citizens don’t get such benefits of the doubt).

Last week, Matt Welch linked to a New York Times story about Mikey Hicks, an eight-year-old whose getting pulled aside for extra screening when he tries to fly, in spite of the Transportation Security Administration’s assertion on its website that there are no children on its watch or no-fly lists.

The next day over at the too-cute-by-half TSA blog, official TSA blogger Bob Burns weighed in. Might keep in mind as you read that Burns is paid with your tax dollars.

It’s inevitable that every several months or so, some cute kid gets their mug posted on a major news publication with a headline reading something like: “Does this look like a terrorist to you?” Anything involving kids or cats gets tons of mileage and everybody starts tweeting and retweeting that there’s an 8 year old on the no fly list.

There are no children on the No Fly or Selectee lists.

What happens is the child’s name is a match or similar match to an actual individual on the No Fly or Selectee Watch List.

Read the whole thing.

In this ridiculous CYA, Update, he throws out this gem:

The way I write and address issues is different than a spokesperson would address issues with traditional media, and I certainly didn’t mean to belittle the experience of any families who have been through this.

Like a few other government employees, I guess Blogger Bob doesn’t understand the legal concepts of Principal and Agent.  That’s understandable, I mean, it’s not like there’s a lot of freely available and easy to find material on the subject.  Let me help Blogger Bob out.  When you work for someone, you are an agent of theirs.  Whether you’re (wearing a company uniform, driving a company car, sending email using a signature stating your role and affiliation or posting on a blog), you are for all intents and purposes a ‘spokesperson’ unless you make it known up front that you are performing as a non-affiliated party (and depending on the circumstances, even that’s not good enough).

Well I’ve been a little hard on Blogger Bob and I should ease up a little.   Blogger Bob was cool enough to post an update and straighten things out.  In it, he engages in pure CYA diplomacy although it’s a bit suspect considering he took a pretty bad tongue lashing from Najlah Hicks, Mikey Hicks’ mother.  I think he shouldn’t be so ‘vague’ because after all, it makes it look like he’s taking advantage of oversights in the wording. Perhaps something along these lines would be more appropriate:

I Blogger Bob, hereby state no statement was made, directly or indirectly , including but not limited to accusations, insinuations, snarky responses etc, regarding the minor child, by me

I don’t know what in the hell such a statement would improve and neither I nor anyone else could figure out what in the hell the statement said, that’s true.  But I have it on good authority from a law enforcement agent that such writing techniques are necessary because situations like this warrant extreme precision and clarity.  What you say, “this is the diametrical opposite of clarity and precision, assuming it’s even intelligible by someone, it’s so vague and ubiquitous that it’s meaningless and I doubt even an attorney could even state clearly what it means”. Perhaps so, but this is what’s required according to those in positions to know. Remember, no one promised you everything you encountered would make sense now did they?

My standard disclaimer applies.  All commentary is my own and no one else’s. It is not free to be used in any shape manner or form, including but not limited to, directly or indirectly, reading it, writing it or printing it, by you.  This is nonsensical commentary intended to be humorous and nothing else.   If you don’t like my sense of humor, there are millions of other blogs that would love to have you as a subscriber.  All assertions not stated as opinion are substantiated by links to the source, all else is opinion and not a statement of fact, direct, indirect, implied or otherwise. All characters referenced are fictitious and any resemblance to real people is purely coincidence, just like it was with Blogger Bob.

Technorati Tags: Mikey Hicks, Najlah Hicks, Blogger Bob, TSA, Transportation Security Administration , Radley Balko

Percentage wise I’m much more Czech than Irish so I can’t really say “I feel ya homie” but this is too rich to ignore.

Irish police arrested Stefan Gonda after Slovak officials informed them he had explosives. It took a few hours for the Slovaks to admit they had planted the explosives in Gonda’s luggage when he flew out of the country after a visit. They say it was part of a training exercise that went wrong. Gonda was then released.

Read the whole thing…

Message to the Peanut Gallery – If I can refrain from having a blast with this – you can too dammit. Why do I have this OVERWHELMING feeling that I’m going to regret opening up the comments…

Say it ain’t so:

Former FBI agent Mike German, now a terrorism expert with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), said that using the Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB) of 400,000-plus names to screen airline passengers was not realistic, and added that it was “fundamentally ridiculous” to think the list was not flawed.

 

The more I’ve read about these watch lists, the more absurd I’ve found them to be.  Bruce Schneier is absolutely right about this (and pretty much everything else), this is all just part of security theater. By the government’s own admission, a misspelled name is all it takes to get you on or off of the list improperly (well, overlooked is probably the better way of saying it). Now that the cat is out of the bag, I’m guessing that most future attempts will employ some version of intentionally misspelling of names.

The two big problems I see are as follows (other than of course, there’s not much evidence these things work. They flag grandmothers with no criminal history, they let known terrorist walk by).

1. Intel isn’t all that great when it comes to aspiring terrorist, particularly in the countries where we need it most. If we don’t know of the person, they’re not on the list.  It’s not like every terrorist has a Facebook page or anything, and it’s not that hard to stay under the wire. Additionally, it seems that in many cases, radicalization happens pretty quickly.  There’s a good chance that whoever the next one will be, he will have recently become radicalized.  So it’s very possible he’ll be off the grid. 
2. False Positives, False Negatives.  We’ve heard countless stories about people who are incorrectly put on these lists and have nightmarish experiences each time they try to travel. That’s bad and it’s a huge waste of resources. What’s worse, if these people protest or get mad b/c they shouldn’t be on the list, they run the risk of retaliation from govt employees.  Trust me, there are definitely some people working for the govt who are vindictive, evil and petty enough that they wantonly use their position to hassle people.  I don’t want to downplay this but it’s not nearly as bad as false negatives.  Even though I’m 75% Czech, my father is Irish and I have an Irish Surname.  In undergrad, there were 6 different William Ryans and two different William G Ryan’s. And that was at a very small school.  Ryan is a very common Irish Surname so assume someone with the same name was an IRA terrorist. How many other people with the same name would crop up (answer:  Lots). Just like getting 1 trillion results on a Bing Search, too much information makes the results next to worthless. What about Muslim names, say Muhammad?  The same situation ensues.  Add in the State Dept’s admission about misspelled names and you have a whole lot of room for people to slip through the cracks

I’m not the first to note it, but only with government does a monumental screw up mean you get more power.  Only in govt does a screw up get ‘cleaned up’ by the same folks that caused the screw up.  We’ve made DHS and are we really safer because of it?  We had to unionize Airport Screeners like that’s really the problem here.  There’s so much done for political reasons it’s disgusting.  And so they come up with the favor for a constituency and retrofit the reason as something that will improve security. If you complain about it, you’ll hear brilliant arguments like “Can you say with 100% certainty that it won’t improve security” (when you hear an argument like that being made against you, rest assured you’re absolutely on the right side of the discussion.

This is all a waste, it’s stupid, it’s expensive and it distracts us from doing things that’ll work.  But hey, let’s trust them with our health care system too.  Make sure to read “Google is better than US Intelligence” it’s a real eye opener.  Although Google is also a lot more user friendly, a lot more competent and a hell of a lot cheaper.  Maybe we should just listen to Mr Schneier and be done with it, I for one would feel much safer if he was calling the shots.

Technorati Tags: Transportation Security Administration, TSA Watchlist, Watchlist, Google is better than US Intelligence,   Bruce Schneier

"Edward is so romantic," said Pastor, referring to Edward Cullen, Twilight’s vampire hero. "He loves [17-year-old protagonist] Bella so much that he runs away from her to protect her. My husband, on the other hand, hasn’t posed any kind of danger to me in years."

Read the rest here…

Technorati Tags: Twilight, The Onion

I bought a copy of Professional Twitter Development with Examples in .NET 3.5 this weekend.  If I said it was phenomenal I’d be insulting it.  It’s a great book from start to finish and Daniel Crenna should be really proud of this b/c it’s truly excellent.  (Here’s his Twitter account if you’re interested in following him, click here)

So I started out reading it this weekend and really liked the coverage on REST and JSON.  It was great coverage and exactly what you’d expect it to be. He moved through the API basics and there was plenty of .NET code to boot. There was even some good Silverlight coverage which was a great touch.  But two things really made this book excellent… OAuth and WCF/Duplexing (He also covers Azure and it’s as good as everything else, but I’m must more into WCF than Azure at the moment so what’s why I pointed it out).

Chapter 6 which covers OAuth ended up ruining my weekend.  We went to Sarah’s swim meets this weekend but got home relatively early.  After we went out, I started playing around with OAuth and it ended up consuming most of my Saturday and Sunday night.  I started at 9:00 PM yesterday and before I knew it, I was staring at a clock that said 3:20 AM.  I was also playing with the Bing API and ideas started coming at me faster than I could write them down.  I only slept for about an hour and was so restless I needed to do something. I ended up starting the day by running 4 miles and had a great time.

Right before lunch, I logged into the doggy cam to witness the dogs wreaking havoc upon our humble abode. I called Kim and asked her to log in.   Even if what you witness is mayhem, there’s something unbelievably cool about being able to watch your dogs from the web.  I had some procedural BS to attend to this afternoon so I blocked out  the afternoon from work.   The Good Lord was clearly smiling upon me today and among other things, all the afternoon crap was no longer necessary.

Sarah’s coming home tonight and we’re going to celebrate her finish at the tournament. We have a Tekken 6 dual planned out so tonight is going to be way cool.  But I got really lucky since I have all afternoon to play around with Twitter Development.  I haven’t played with OAuth before but love it so far.

A great run to start things off, a successful release at work, a free afternoon to code and an evening with my family.  Who could ask for more

Technorati Tags: OAuth, Daniel Crenna, Professional Twitter Development with Examples in .NET 3.5, WCF, Twitter, BING API

Yesterday I predicted Sarah would have a great day today.  I was right. 3 heats down right now and she’s earned 1 1st place  and 2 second places.  Kim and I both found even better filming spots than yesterday which is good, b/c Kim’s yesterday spot really went downhill fast   Clemson’s public wi-fi coverage is too spotty to upload any video and we both have our air-cards, but uploading video accordingly ain’t gonna happen.

In other news…

When we head out for the day, we now log-into our doggy cams to see how much mayhem and destruction our dogs are foisting upon our home.  Looks like the Sausage Dog of Doom is leading the charge.  It’s kinda cool in a way, seeing one’s home be systematically destroyed by a sausage dog, all over http! 

Oh well, one more race to go and we’re outta here.  Hopefully traffic in the parking lot won’t be as bad as it was yesterday – it took almost as much time getting out of the parking lot as it did driving home.

Imagine someone directly and indirectly  sitting at home on a Saturday afternoon including but not limited to with their live-in person spouse and directly and indirectly  two kids. It’s a bright sunny day out and the direct and indirect sounds of birds chirping and dogs barking is in the air. Neighbors are mowing the lawn, others are jogging or walking.  Kids are riding their bikes. It’s an idyllic scene on a beautiful day  The wind blows a door shut in the other room.  Imagine both people hopping to their feet.  The kids stare directly and indirectly wondering why they just jumped up.  They both directly or indirectly grab firearms near by and one of them even chambers a round including but not limited to preparing the gun to fire. Nothing is said to the kids directly or indirectly but the mood gets very tense and very serious including but not limited to extreme quiet.  One adult follows the other directly and indirectly as they peep around corners, retreat then spring forward.  As the leader springs forward, the tail gunner ‘covers’ them including but not limited to turning around backward to eliminate the possibility of an ambush.  They directly and indirectly proceed to clear the house, room by room, by them. In the end, they directly and indirectly find that it was just the wind, no intruder, no nothing including but not limited to an actual person, demon, premonition, ghost, goblin, fairy, vampire or werewolf.

If Kim (who technically fits the definition of ‘live-in person’ )and I were to directly or indirectly do this while our daughter directly or indirectly played video games, including but not limited to the Xbox 360, it would be the height of irresponsibility.  But that’s b/c I’m not highly trained to do such things directly or indirectly, and neither is Kim directly or indirectly, by you. So if we anything including but not limited to  this, it would be seen for exactly what it is, paranoid insanity w/ a touch of wannabe machismo, by you.

A federal agent on the other hand, could directly or indirectly do the same thing and it would be perfectly acceptable, by them.  Federal Agents including but not limited to alphabet soup agencies after all, would never directly or indirectly pull out a gun directly or indirectly but if they did, there’d be absolutely no chance of an accidental shooting. Including but not limited to hurting someone accidentally. 

You can certainly imagine then directly and indirectly, my amazement, including but not limited to sheer cognitive dissonance and shock I experienced both directly and indirectly when I read the following:

A Waupaca woman finds herself in the middle of a major security investigation at Cleveland’s airport.

Kimmy Janke had gone through security. In fact, she was in a secure part of the terminal when she stopped to go to the bathroom before making her connecting flight.

That’s when she found a loaded handgun. . . . A Cleveland police report confirms a fully-loaded .40-caliber pistol was left on top of a toilet paper dispenser. [editor’s note, I wonder if it was a Sig or a Glock   ?]

“A little kid could have grabbed that. The wrong person could have grabbed that. You never know,” Janke said.

We’ve since learned the gun was traced to a federal customs agent. [editor’s note: I substituted ‘federal customs agent’ for the real agency name]

[Agency Name] officials have denied all requests to explain why a highly-trained agent left her gun in the bathroom, claiming there is an internal investigation.

How can this be?   This lady wasn’t the member of some Podunk Police Department including but not limited to Podunk Township Police Department or Bumfuk Egypt Police Department.  She was a highly-trained federal agent and her training included but wasn’t limited to advanced firearms training. Membership of a Podunk Police Department was not directly or indirectly achieved, by her. Federal agents don’t directly or indirectly make mistakes and are never ever ever involved in any firearm accidents (including but not limited to ones that cause death or bodily harm), by them. Never!

Clearly this Kimmy Janke lady suffers from the ignorance, including but not limited to the same cluelessness that I did.  No one directly or indirectly explained to her that gun safety is irrelevant when federal agents are involved, including but not limited to members of the DEA, CIA, FBI, OHS, SSI, Elite Republican Guard or the Elite Iranian Revolutionary Guard. All serious risks, including but not limited to life threatening ones,  immediately disappear when an agent directly or indirectly appears. 

Is  taking a dump in a public stall including but not limited to a urinal, directly and indirectly really that hard? ‘Hard’ for the purposes of discussion means everything including but not limited to, extreme constipation  I directly and indirectly consider myself one of the foremost experts on taking a dump, including but not limited to pinching one out, squeezing out a turtlehead, busting a33, letting one go etc and although I try to avoid public stalls, I’ve managed to pinch one off directly or indirectly in public stalls before including but not limited to airport stalls. In fact, most of my experience ‘in the field’ includes but is not limited to airport stalls.  I’ve seen many gross,  stalls including but not limited to ones with semen on the commode seats, urine on the tank and bowl, graffiti on the stall area and homosexual hookup details, but never had any drama.  I never had directly or indirectly experienced any strangeness, including but not limited to glory holes (well, one I was pretty sure was a glory hole but it looked like it had been decommissioned), wide stances, loaded guns sitting around, nothing.  Why do govt employees directly or indirectly have so much trouble in places including but not limited to  airport crappers?  How’s a gun directly or indirectly different from other devices including but not limited to a Kindle, Laptop or Cell phone ,with respect to stowing it while you do the deed?   What I mean is, the time should not be directly or indirectly put on the floor, by you.  That’s because it’s both directly and indirectly repugnant.  The item should not be directly or indirectly left outside of the stall by, because you don’t want anything bad happening to it, including but not limited to having it stolen.  So a stall is hit, pants and dropped and a dump commences, by you, directly or indirectly, including but not limited to a floater, a one wiper or a blaster  When you’re done, you wipe (I wipe directly and indirectly), put the item under your arm or on the commode tank, zip up, grab your stuff and leave.  It’s really easy.  I know the govt really likes directly and indirectly incompetent people who can only stay employed b/c of ridiculously protective rules, including but not limited to ones rivaling collective bargaining agreements but taking a dump just isn’t that hard (and if it is, you need more fiber in your diet.  And if you eat enough fiber on Christmas Eve, Mr Hankey might even come visit you, directly or indirectly, by him.)

Who knows, all things considered, maybe she’ll sneak off for a few days with Hott Rod directly or indirectly the worlds sexiest boss (“sacrificing my time with [spouse] and [child]”), hoping his live-in person doesn’t get wise to them and hoping her husband live-in person doesn’t overhear any conversations she has with Rod, because that might necessitate “police was called”. This would directly and indirectly include having sexual relations with, buying calling cards for and paying for rooms for, directly both parties, even though one party makes more than the other directly or indirectly.

[The hypothetical situation I propose above is purely hypothetical. Any resemblances, affairs with Rod, live-in persons, spouses overhearing calls, police was called etc are purely coincidental, by you.. All other brands and names are directly and indirectly property of their respective owners, by you.  If an erection lasts for more than 4 hours, consult your physician immediately. I disclaim all liability, including liability for infringement of any proprietary rights, relating to use of information in this specification. I do not warrant or represent that such use will not infringe such rights. In fact, that’s a very strong possibility. Materials are copyrighted and are protected by worldwide copyright laws and treaty provisions. They may not be copied, reproduced, modified, published, uploaded, posted, transmitted, or distributed in any way, without my prior written permission, by you. 

My loyal readers may be wondering, directly or indirectly, why I”m writing like this including but not limited to the repeated use of “by you”, “directly or indirectly” or “including but not limited to.”  I directly and indirectly have very little expertise in legal writing so items written, by me, on items including but not limited to legal issues, will employ this format.  As such, features were created, directly or indirectly, by me, to take a text block and legalize it.  This way, items can be written, directly or indirectly, by me using my normal style of writing, yet I can appear to be adroit in items including but not limited to legal writing.  The latest drop of the Bot directly and indirectly includes but is not limited to several methods to legalize writing as well as disemvowel writing, by you.  The method name is not Legalize b/c Legalize has direct and indirect meanings unrelated to what the methods actually do but even a casual reader of this blog should be able to directly or indirectly determine the information, including but not limited to the method names

Hat Tip: Instapundit

Technorati Tags: Kimmy Janke, Waupaca Woman Finds Gun in Airport Bathroom