Bill Ryan's Other Blog

I first learned of J. J. Luna in his interview with Playboy.  Let’s just say I found him fascinating. Unlike many other ‘How To Disappear” Gurus, this guy was real.  Nothing cheesy about him and nothing that made you feel like you were being scammed. And most importantly, he emphasized over and over that if you were a criminal or trying to skirt the law – he wanted nothing to do with you. He made the case that many people have 10000% legitimate reasons for wanting privacy and that really resonated with me.  So I bought his book How to Be Invisible and fell in love.  For a while, I did everything he recommended and it worked perfectly – although since 9/11 some of it’s been a little harder.   He now sends out a newsletter and has a blog and sent this a while back:

These sites all say, "This product only needs to be installed on your phone."  So, you don’t have to have physical access to the target’s phone.  You just have to know their number.
     A few months ago we saw this one come up on your board: http://www.cellspypro.com. Someone also mentioned Bluetooth hacking. This site sells lots of interesting spying tools for which I cannot think of a legal use —http://www.e-stealth.com —especially their ULTIMATE-BLUETOOTH-MOBILE-PHONE-SPY-SOFTWARE-NEW-EDITION-2008.
    Bent PI’s definitely use these whereas 3-Letter Agencies (usually) have a warrant before doing this.
     I believe these companies are being watched because you can only get their products after paying with a credit card. The customers are therefore known to the watchers. (It would be simple to determine if your stalker was using this. If checked out, his financial documents would show this purchase. Or if not his, then that of a close associate).
     I get exasperated looks from people when I tell them I don’t carry a cell phone.  I stopped carrying one about 3 years ago.

I encourage readers to look at the links.  If there’s more interest – i’ll post the rest of the article.  At first, you’ll no doubt think it’s just marketing hype and BS.  I’d encourage those of you that believe that to did your toe in the water and buy either product.  Then follow the instructions.  Then sit back and be stunned/shocked at the results.  A lot of this stuff is iffy in terms of legality and almost certainly crosses the line in terms of admissibility. However knowing where the bodies are stored is a big benefit – that can lead you to them and you can ‘accidentally’ stumble across them.  At that point, everything you find would be admissible. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out how this stuff could be advantageous to pretty much any situation where one has an adversary (especially an adversary that’s abusing their power or that’s inclined to cheat in the first place)

Here’s another link you might find interesting (compliments of Mr Luna as well):

TAPPING YOUR CELL PHONE

From Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit – BREAKING THE BOTNET CODE:

BREAKING THE BOTNET CODE. “Networks of compromised computers controlled by a central server, better known as botnets, are a Swiss Army knife of tools for online criminals. Hackers can use these co-opted systems to churn out spam, host malicious code, hide their tracks on the Internet, or flood a corporate network to cut off its access to the Web.”

Wait a second here… you mean studying Bots and Botnets is a Good thing?  Say It Ain’t So.  You mean people actually use Bots to learn how other bots operates in an effort to help defeat them?  You Gotta Be Fing Kidding me.   You mean to tell me studying Bots and BotNets can help make the internet and computing more secure?  Gee Willickers You mean they are free to discuss their findings and write about their bots?  Holy Cow!  Don’t these people realize that someone might COMPLETELY MISINTERPRET what they are doing and writing about?

I don’t know what’s more amazing to me, that they are allowed to study Bots and Botnets or that they are allowed to discuss their findings.  They certainly don’t live in Spartanburg County, SC.  I better stop while I’m ahead

As I was getting prepped up for this weekend’s contest, I was just doing some basic reviews of Science, Physics and Math.  The goal of the contest is centered around a green solution, so each of the above factors will likely have a big role in it.

I was looking at my Frequent flier miles from last year (I travel way too much and last year, I really travelled way too much).  When I flew to Sweden, I accumulated about 4500 miles each way.  I flew into Schiphol and from there, to Stockholm so it wasn’t a direct trip.  Needless to say, it was a long trip (12 hrs flight time) in some respects, but rather short compared to the other non-European flights I’ve had (Ok, South America usually isn’t that long either unless you really go FAR south).  I had 9,000 miles in my head when I read a story about another near miss.

The article says the asteroid was only 23 ft across which according to people who study such things, means it wouldn’t do much damage. While I’m not calling BS on anyone.. am I the only one who was told a story as a kid about how a penny dropped from the top of the Empire State Building could kill you?   The cognitive dissonance that accompanied such a thought led me to look it up and apparently the Penny death stuff is urban legend.  Whew! 

The ‘problem’ so to speak is that the Asteroid was undetected.  And that’s a problem b/c it wouldn’t have to be a whole lot bigger to bring the noise and open up a big can of Armageddon. I don’t know if Carl Maldin is still with us, but methinks Bruce Willis is a little too old to be of much help here (not dissing old folks or anything).

Glenn Reynolds, aka Instapundit, aka perhaps the consistently awesome blogger around covers near misses regularly and well, seems to me there’s a lot of them (and I’m not just saying he’s awesome b/c he drives the world’s quintessential Alpha Male Inspired Automobile). And they are happening with more frequency. 

No one really complained when money was being squandered on pork barrel BS instead of reinforcing the New Orleans Levies.  It didn’t matter until it mattered.  People look at the benefits but ignore the opportunity costs.  I hope history isn’t repeating itself on a macro level. What I mean is, money spent to detect and counter Armageddon causing stuff from space is value added in so many ways. For one it could save us from extinction.  Even though I don’t watch TV as a rule, I did happen to catch that one Discovery channel show on the Asteroids and Hypercanes and well, something doesn’t have to wipe us out to really suck.  Money spent avoiding this will undoubtedly lead to technologies that have other applications and as we saw with the Space Program, this is a very good thing. So let’s say we took some of this stimulus money that we’re wasting on junk like this.

If we do get hit by a comet or big asteroid, it’ll be ugly in all likelihood (after all most of the Earth is water and a big rock hitting it could cause a lot of Steam and that’s just the beginning. I can’t think of too many more clear cut things that do fit in the “Role of govt”category – so if we’re going to burn all sorts of money on Stimulus stuff and grow the govt to a size that would make George W. Bush and David Frum blush, can we at least waste some of that money on something that’ll benefit us?