In a post titled ‘James Bond’s Dry Erase Marker,’ hotel hacker Matthew Jakubowski [demonstrated] how anyone can build this pocket-sized device which will open the lock on an estimated 4 million hotel rooms.
‘I guess we wanted to show that this sort of attack can happen with a very small concealable device,’ says Jakubowski …
The device exploits a vulnerability in Onity locks, a cheap lock used on millions of hotel room doors.
Onity’s site boasts their locks are used in 22,000 hotel worldwide.
He guesses “we wanted to show,” did he? Was he not sure? Or did “they” just kinda accidentally coincidentally develop a jimmy to get into hotel rooms?
Boy, who knows what you could do in the service of mankind with a box of these and a crew on the evening of the BCS National Championship Game in Miami this bowl season!
Amid a chart packed with erotica and romance, novelist Ray Gorham cracked our Self-Published Bestsellers List this week with a $1.99 thriller [77 Days in September] about an electromagnetic pulse attack (EMP) on the United States.
On a Friday afternoon before Labor Day, Americans are getting ready for the holiday weekend, completely unaware of a long-planned terrorist plot about to be launched against the country. Kyle Tait is settling in for his flight home to Montana when a single nuclear bomb is detonated 300 miles above the heart of America. The blast, an Electro-Magnetic Pulse (EMP), destroys every electrical device in the country, and results in the crippling of the power grid, the shutting down of modern communications, and bringing to a halt most forms of transportation.
Kyle narrowly escapes when his airplane crashes on take-off, only to find himself stranded 2,000 miles from home in a country that has been forced, from a technological standpoint, back to the 19th Century …
“Well, it’s over. Or almost over, thank God. It looks like Obama will probably win, which I guess is good news, compared to the alternative – a Mitt Romney presidency would have felt like four straight years of waking up with a naked Lloyd Blankfein sitting on your face.”
“A decision that in reality takes one or two days of careful research to make is somehow stretched out into a process that involves two years of relentless, suffocating mind-warfare, an onslaught of toxic media messaging directed at liberals, conservatives and everyone in between that by Election Day makes every dinner conversation dangerous and literally divides families.”
Pretty much, although it doesn’t get at the huge splits and chasms that exist between the tribes of America.
I lost a friend recently because he and his upper class pals could not stop harping about the evil of the income tax, the 47 percent of the country — lazy moochers without the talent or work ethic to survive without entitlements — got out of paying it and how food stamps were bad.
A woman from Los Angeles who was a tree hugger, a liberal Democrat, and an anti-hunter, purchased a piece of timberland near Colville, WA .
There was a large tree on one of the highest points in the tract. She wanted a good view of the natural splendor of her land, so she started to climb the big tree. As she neared the top she encountered a spotted owl that attacked her. In her haste to escape, the woman slid down the tree to the ground and got many splinters in her crotch.
In considerable pain, she hurried to a local ER to see a doctor. She told him she was an environmentalist, a democrat, and an anti-hunter and how she came to get all the splinters. The doctor listened to her story with great patience and then told her to go wait in the examining room and he would see if he could help her.
She sat and waited three hours before the doctor reappeared. The angry woman demanded,???What took you so long???? He smiled and then told her, “Well, I had to get permits from the Environmental Protection Agency, the Forest Service, and the Bureau of Land Management before I could remove old-growth timber from a recreational area so close to a waste treatment facility. I’m sorry, but due to Obama Care they turned me down.???
Great stuff, gratuitously nasty to more than half the population, too. And now we ain’t pals.
“Politicians are much to blame for this, but we in the media have to take responsibility for the damage we do to the American psyche in the name of election coverage. At this very moment, there are people all over the country who are stocking up on canned goods and ammo for the apocalypse they believe will come if Obama is re-elected.”
The media isn’t responsible for the Ted Nugent voter, it just often covers them poorly, as if being a bigot is simply a difference in respectable opinion. It’s the property of the GOP. Taibbi knows it.
Yesterday, the serial liar known as Mitt Romney went back to his astonishing nitwit’s claim about the current US Navy, in relation to the battleship navy of WWI.
Today, the mainstream media stopped overlooking this idiocy from the Republican Party’s intelligence-insulting candidate for President. Only because Romney used it in his much-publicized speech on foreign policy and alleged US military weakness.
Still, we were interested in his assertion about the size of the Navy. Is the Navy really in the worst shape it has been in 96 years?
The Facts
The historical records of the Navy show that in 1916, the Navy had 245 ships. This was also the year that President Woodrow Wilson signed into law the Naval Act of 1916, which put the United States on a crash course to build a world-class Navy.
But take a look at the types of ships on the list. Yes, there are cruisers and destroyers but also:
In 1917, there were obviously no nuclear-powered carrier strike groups, no nuclear attack or ballistic missile submarines, no cruise missiles, no nothing associated with the modern US Navy. (Number of capital units in the modern USN: 11 supercarriers, 18 ballistic missile subs, nuclear attack submatines — lots, etc. Number of “capital,” ahem, ships in 1917 USN: 16 battleships and another 23 pre-bb antiques.)
Further:
To go further into destroying Mitt Romney’s weird comparison would be the same as wasting one’s time chatting with a cinder block. It’s as dumbfounding as everything else in the secret video. And while Romney’s vignette may have been effective with hedge fund wealth at the secret dinner, it leaves one wondering just how he came up with it.
Kessler:
This is an apples-and-oranges comparison. Romney’s line reminds us of a similar strained comparison he made last year … But in this case he goes even deeper back into history. After all, 1916 is not only before computers, it is before television — even before regular radio broadcasts.
Kessler adds the Romney campaign informed that the candidate got his argument from “now-retired Adm. Gary Roughead” from a 2010 speech.
Whatever. Stupidity is hardly rare and acquisition of it from someone else does not magically transmute the lead into gold.
Kessler consults John Pike of GlobalSecurity, yes — the same place I write and do media for:
John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, notes that it is difficult to make comparisons between ships that are even much more recent. “Today’s aircraft carrier has about 10 times the lethality of an aircraft carrier of 20 years ago …
“The current level of ships, 285 in fiscal 2011, is actually not even the lowest since 1916,” informs the Post’s fact-checker. “The historical list shows that the lowest ship force was reached during the Bush administration …”
And he, and I, have already spent way too much time on Romney’s ridiculous, and — as usual — factually challenged and inept, claims.
Is there anyone, at this point, who doesn’t understand why Mitt Romney needs to be treated with total contempt?
Pay attention to the lyrics, they scroll: “He’s big and rich and always lyin’/And if it don’t stop we’ll all be dyin.'”
Lots of journalism on terrorism qualifies only as nuisance reporting. It’s purpose is to either titillate an audience, pitch the journalist’s faux bravura, or both. Nuisance journalism has no relationship with reality.
If groups have supporters overseas, then the internet allows communities all over the world with similar goals to unite and share knowledge – it enables, for example, far-Right White Power groups in the US to give online weapons training to their colleagues in the UK. It was this sort of online advice that led father and son extremists Ian and Nick Davidson (aka “The Aryan Strike Force???) to manufacture the poison gas Ricin in their kitchen.
Taking their lead from US groups, and working from Terror manuals produced in the USA, the Davidsons managed to not simply manufacture the gas, but also they were able to home make explosives, recruit a network of almost 350 like-minded people and plan attacks on Blacks, Muslims, Asians and Jews. They funded their activities by selling Nazi-themed mouse mats and key rings.
Ricin is not a poison gas. And the “recipes” on it, as simplistic as they are on the Internet, do not even state that.
“Thus, the internet has made terror much easier,” concludes the Telegraph piece by Wllard Foxton, “an investigative journalist & television producer [who] writes on skulduggery wherever he finds it, especially in the world of technology.”
Foxton gets the name wrong of the Brit neo-Nazi in this case — it was the father/son team of Ian and Nicky Davison.
A thorough reporting job, by a UK newspaper, is here, in the rather cleverly entitled, “Keyboard warriors, or threat to the republic?”
What the two produced was an unrefined mixture of ricin and liquid in a jar. The case revealed it had been made in 2006 and stored in a jam jar for four years.
“It is thought the ricin had been produced in 2006 and had remained undisturbed in Davison’s kitchen ever since,” reads the newspaper report. “Although it was fairly crude and had not undergone the purification necessary to turn it into an effective weapon …”
In the kitchen.
Castor powder mess, including ricin, in a jar. Does it look like an easily made poison gas to you?
Starting at mid-week, DD’s semi-old “GE & Jeff” tune jumped about 700 views, making it the most popular thing I’ve done, a position formerly held by “That’s Logistics,” a spoof of UPS made after the failed al Qaeda toner cartridge bomb plot. (The latter continually benefits from people looking for the “logistics song” when UPS runs them in commercials. Paradoxically, it highlights that Google search algorithms have made an environment were simple copying and imitation become signally important. While it results in a lot of creative parodies, the main beneficiaries are people who sit in their bedrooms with webcams, brainlessly playing, singing or miming along to whatever current tune is in the charts.)
But I wandered there.
Anyway, “GE & Jeff” was boosted by a post on Crooks & Liars on General Electric, and how it’s used its clout to become a big beneficiary of bank rescue programs.
General Electric, the world’s largest industrial company, has quietly become the biggest beneficiary of one of the government’s key rescue programs for banks.
At the same time, GE has avoided many of the restrictions facing other financial giants getting help from the government.
The company did not initially qualify for the program, under which the government sought to unfreeze credit markets by guaranteeing debt sold by banking firms. But regulators soon loosened the eligibility requirements, in part because of behind-the-scenes appeals from GE.
As a result, GE has joined major banks collectively saving billions of dollars by raising money for their operations at lower interest rates. Public records show that GE Capital, the company’s massive financing arm, has issued nearly a quarter of the $340 billion in debt backed by the program, which is known as the Temporary Liquidity Guarantee Program, or TLGP.
“Jeff Immelt is also one of the people pushing for the Grand Bargain,” she concludes. “Isn’t that nice that someone so compassionate is looking out for us?”
Formerly, political websites on both sides had benefited from direct ad buys. Now, Google and consultants have put themselves into it as middlemen, taking a slice of the pie by mediating the advertising over unrelated sites and audiences, directed only by information found in cookies.
“Surging spending on online ads has spawned a new generation of campaign consultants, skilled in new targeting tools and less inclined to spend money on Web sites merely because they support a partisan message,” reads the WaPost.
Ads called by the reading of cookies from your browser temporary directory are the cheapest and, from my experience, least effective form of advertising.
It is rationalized thusly:
Zac Moffatt, digital director for Mitt Romney’s campaign, said most of its online ads are bought that way.“We’re not buying a site. We’re buying an audience,??? Moffatt said. “The power of the Internet is targeting.???
“This is happening from both sides of the aisle, but let me say that his excuse is absolute crap,” counters Amata at C&L. “Who do they think their audience is? It’s us, morons. Our readers and others like us are the most knowledgeable and can become great activist assets for any campaign or targeted meme so it behooves these super consultants to make sure to include our sites into their mix …”
“If you’re sick of Google and consultants taking over the world then I’d suggest in the future that all readers should make a mental note and when unions, political action committees and campaigns at the state and local levels, or whoever ask you to help out make sure to tell them to support the blogosphere or you’re not interested,” Amato concludes.
A few years ago GlobalSecurity.Org started a “revenue sharing” program with its bloggers at SITREP, of which I’m the biggest (compared with a variety of nobodies from Rand, Heritage and other places that used to be big names), using Google ads.
Google advertising returned a minimal number of views, half of which — but which were still charged — did not appear to be actual views at all.
That video is here and the ad campaign results can be visualized by clicking on the icon to the right of “view number.” This will unfold a chart of views versus time.
By clicking on “show more events” under “Key discovery” you can see where the ad campaign started — at the letter “I” — and where I ended it, where the line flattens. (It amounts to 65 views by Google’s count, only half of which actually watched for more a second. The music doesn’t actually begin until old-style second film countdown is about done.)
Half of the rise were apparent non-views counted as views. The rest of the rise, from the letter “H” to the end of line, is through views coming from embeds here (and at GlobalSecurity) and native search.
Mitt Romney is very wealthy. Good for him. He could only have achieved his amazing fortune in America, the land of opportunity. The opportunity that made Mr. Romney rich is still out there for the taking.
If you still don’t understand why it’s hysterical, time to go elsewhere. Copy editors wept.
The rest insists the only people who vote Democratic are lazy non-white “bloodsuckers” who spend what little they have on lottery tickets.
It’s beyond offensive:
[The] backbone of the Democratic Party, the ones buying the most lottery tickets, are the ones who can least afford it. Duh. If these mouth-breathers promise not to vote, the GOP should buy them a lottery ticket.
“You might want to note that there is no demonization of the wealthy from Republicans, only Democrats,” he writes.
Yes, readers have noticed Ted. The GOP, those not in the 1 percent, and he ain’t, are the finest collection of bigots and shoe-shiners the rest of the country’s probably ever seen.
The “mouth-breathers” and “bloodsuckers” spend it all on lottery tickets and liquor. Stop attacking your betters, stupid lazy drunks!
The Democratic Party is a party of fecklessness. Its politicians can be reliably counted on to often not show up at critical junctures, to inexplicably throw games. Last night was one such big moment.
When the Republican candidate is allowed to get away with claims that he supports education — in the age of Google and instant correction, your teeth almost fall out.
But today Mitt Romney got a good deal more specific, claiming we do not need to hire more cops or firefighters specifically, which would, he said, cut against the interests of the American people. He also specifically named teachers.
Romney made the comments in response to Obama’s presser today, at which the president claimed the “private sector is doing fine.??? Per CNN:
Romney said of Obama, “he wants another stimulus, he wants to hire more government workers. He says we need more fireman, more policeman, more teachers. Did he not get the message of Wisconsin? The American people did. It’s time for us to cut back on government and help the American people.???
The question arises, from today’s video up top: “Why didn’t you say that last night? Were you sick or just taking the opportunity to choke?”
There’s a lot wrong with Barack Obama as president of the United States. But the guy on the other side of the fence truly represents the forces of darkness. Romney is the spear carrier for a party that is insane.
