That's some impressive Detective work, Chief

Oops:

Firefighters who responded to a hotel blaze stumbled upon a blood-spattered hotel room littered with bottles of alcohol and even a piece of a scalp.

Police Chief J.R. Blyth, who was called in to investigate, described the discovery at the George Washington Hotel in Pittsburgh as 'the most grisly murder scene in his 35 years in law enforcement'.

Detectives had spent eight hours of overtime on the investigation before Chief Blyth realised the blood wasn’t real and that the murder scene was in fact the leftover set of a horror movie filmed two years ago with Corey Haim.

I guess that the Pittsburgh PD don't have many officers who are fans of B-grade horror flicks.

True dat

I get a wave when I'm on the motorcycle (from other bikers).  I get a wave when I'm in the Jeep (from other Wrangler drivers).  It's kind of cool.

Quote of the Day: Terrorists on Trains

Word:

One thing seems perfectly clear, though. We’ve been instructed for years that our patriotic duty is to fear and hate these invariably incompetent people, to live in terror lest they attack us, and to accept that it’s in our sheeplike interest to give up a little convenience – in the form of all our liberty and privacy – so that our beloved government may provide us the security of a well-run prison. But every time one of these would-be tragedies actually happens – as opposed to being something feds set up some kid to do – but becomes a feel-good story instead, it’s because somebody who hasn’t been spying on you or shooting your dog sees what’s going down, puts on his big-boy pants, and thumps the bad guy soundly his own unauthorized self.

There's more, including a hilarious picture.  RTWT.

This is SO wrong ...

But I'm doing it anyway.

Hat tip: Rick, via email.

How to reduce School shootings

Seen at a school in Arkansas:

Remember that Jeep computer hack?

Surprise!  It's not just Jeep:

Now, according to a report in Wired, that a host of similar systems used by other car manufacturers are vulnerable to similar attacks:

Over the last week, Kamkar has analyzed the iOS apps of BMW’s Remote, Mercedes-Benz mbrace, Chrysler Uconnect, and the alarm system Viper’s Smartstart, and found that all of those internet-connected vehicle services are vulnerable to the attack he used to hack GM’s OnStar RemoteLink app.

"If you’re using any of these four apps, I can automatically get all of your log-in information and then indefinitely authenticate as you," says Kamkar. "These apps give me different levels of control of your car. But they all give me some amount of control."

And $100 says it's not just Jeep, BMW, and Mercedes ...

On this day in 1938

Lou Gehrig his his 23rd career grand slam.  That record was to stand for 75 years until it was broken by Alex Rodriguez.  There is no record as to whether Gehrig also used performance enhancing drugs.  And since we're talking about A-Rod, here is a musical homage to his career:

About that Ashley Madison "Cheating" website hack

It appears that the data that is being leaked is for real.  Not that you'd do that, of course.

It also seems that there was no verification done on email addressed used in site signup.  This means that anyone could create an account for, say, jeb.bush@state.fl.us and it would be in the database that was just released.  There's an interesting attack that security guys call "Information Poisoning", where the attack is intended to create distrust in a community or data set.  If you can inject enough distrust, then you can render the resource worthless.

Given the recent OPM hack, I'm starting to wonder if this is the wave of the future - injection of embarrassing data into sites like this and then a subsequent hack to expose said data.  Certainly the capability exists to do this sort of thing.

Ah, working from home

I must say that I love my commute, and since everything here uses videoconferencing over the Internet, I love the (mostly) not traveling.  Err, until the Internet goes down.

Like it did yesterday.  In the middle of a big presentation to the Air Force.  Of course, I was the presenter.  Fortunately, the Help Desk at AT&T was completely helpful:

The heart is just exactly the right touch for people all p***ed off about the network going down.  Way to go, Brittany. 

Old fart

As I clean up and sort through the lower reaches of Camp Borepatch, I find long lost wonders.  One was some Kodak slide carousels.  A couple were slides taken by my late Father-in-Law; the ex will be wanting these, no doubt.  One was slides taken by me no doubt on a vacation around 1990 or so - I posted some of these here, and these are very likely of the same vintage.

But one was slides.  As in, Presentation Slides.  On Network Security.  Circa 1994-1995.

[blink] [blink]

I'm trying to remember when I had these made and for which venue, but two decades are somewhat thwarting  my memory.

To add to the feeling of "old fartness", it seems that the crazy hipsters use the term "slidemanship" for something out of Mario Kart.  Back In The Day it was the process of establishing dominance over your audience by first establishing dominance over your projectionist.  Somewhere I have a hilarious writeup about that, which involves backwards slides, slides that are two pieces of film stuck together with wax that slide apart and de-focus when the heat of the lamp melts it, obscure references in Cyrillic typefonts ("Russian?  No, no - Bulgarian, old chap!").

Mario Cart, indeed.  Get offa my lawn, punks. 

Invalid encryption key

Good thing there are some others to try ...

Quotes of the Day: Climate Science is broken

Shot:

“The time for debate has ended”
— Marcia McNutt (editor-in-Chief of Science, next President of the NAS) in “The beyond-two-degree inferno“, editorial in Science, 3 July 2015.

I agree with McNutt: the public policy debate has ended. Climate science as an institution is broken, the larger science community applauds its dysfunctionality, and a critical mass of the US public has lost confidence in it. As a result, the US will take no substantial steps to prepare for possible future climate change, not even preparing for the inevitable re-occurrence of past extreme weather.

Chaser:

It is a sad state of affairs for climate science that this book [Mark Steyn's new book on Michael Mann of "Hockey Stick" fame - Borepatch] had to be written (it was brought on by Michael Mann’s lawsuit – without the lawsuit, Steyn obviously wouldn’t have bothered).   At a time when the U.S. and the world’s nations are trying to put together an agreement to tackle climate change (for better or for worse), Steyn’s book reminds everyone of Climategate, why the public doesn’t trust climate scientists and aren’t buying their ‘consensus.

Both are worth reading in their entirety.

Voting machines: a security nightmare

The Silicon Graybeard points out the least secure voting machines in America:

H/T to Yahoo! Tech for the story.  As usual, the problem is government.  In particular, after the "Hanging Chad" election in 2000, the congress passed the Help America Vote Act of 2002. Among other things, the Act banned punched-card and mechanical-lever voting machines.  This led to the inevitable gold rush to suck up that gubmint money by producing voting machines.  And just as the War on Some Drugs money has always been spent so wisely; like the Quadro Tracker, the $1000 empty box with a 'diving rod' on it, so was spent the Help America Vote money.

 It was so bad that Virginia has banned their use because the security is so wretched:

Switching to Epstein's summary for a moment:

If an election was held using the AVS WinVote, and it wasn’t hacked, it was only because no one tried. The vulnerabilities were so severe, and so trivial to exploit, that anyone with even a modicum of training could have succeeded. They didn’t need to be in the polling place – within a few hundred feet (e.g., in the parking lot) is easy, and within a half mile with a rudimentary antenna built using a Pringles can. Further, there are no logs or other records that would indicate if such a thing ever happened, so if an election was hacked any time in the past, we will never know.

How bad was it?  How about the shiny key to lock the machine?  Epstein reports “All the keys are the same for every Winvote that’s ever been made, because that way it’s easier,”

• Winvote’s machine runs a version of Windows XP that hasn’t had patches installed since 2004 — four years before AVS deservedly went out of business.

• Its wireless network is “safeguarded” with insecure WEP encryption — and the password is abcde. (and that was unchangeable)

• The Windows admin password is (no, I’m not making this up) admin. (and that seemed unchangeable as well)

RTWT for the whole horrifying thing.

75 years after "The Hardest Day"

August 1940 saw the German Luftwaffe try to establish air superiority over Great Britain.  Hitler's planned invasion of that island was running out of time - the English Channel gets notoriously stormy in the autumn, and mid-August was getting perilously close to autumn.  But Hermann Goering assured the Fuhrer that he had the Royal Air Force on the ropes.  One more big push would break RAF Fighter Command.

August 18 was that big push.

But it didn't go that way.  Hundreds of RAF Fighters rose to savage the German bombers.  While this "Hardest Day" was just about exactly a draw in terms of losses, it showed that the RAF was most definitely not on the ropes.  While the Battle of Britain would go on for weeks, Hitler's mind was already shifting to the Eastern Front.  In Churchill's immortal words, never had so many owed so much to so few, those who flew sortie after sortie on that Hardest Day.



Three Quarters of a Century later, those Few are few indeed.  Per Ardua ad Astra, indeed.

Um, yeah

Want me to keep holding your beer?

Donald Trump: American Caesar

Shot:

If you’re keeping score, in the past month Trump has bitch-slapped the entire Republican Party, redefined our expectations of politics, focused the national discussion on immigration, proposed the only new idea for handling ISIS, and taken functional control of FOX News. And I don’t think he put much effort into it. Imagine what he could do if he gave up golf.

As far as I can tell, Trump’s “crazy talk” is always in the correct direction for a skilled persuader. When Trump sets an “anchor” in your mind, it is never random. And it seems to work every time.

Now that Trump owns FOX, and I see how well his anchor trick works with the public, I’m going to predict he will be our next president. I think he will move to the center on social issues (already happening) and win against Clinton in a tight election.

I also saw some Internet chatter about the idea of picking Mark Cuban as Vice Presidential running mate. If that happens, Republicans win. And I think they like to win. There is no way Trump picks some desiccated Governor from an important state as his running mate. I think Cuban is a realistic possibility.

Chaser:

Trump is a complicated subject... because its insane... but the situation is so nutty that he starts to make sense... which tells you how insane the situation is...

Americans are furious. Both sides of the political spectrum.

Republicans are pissed.

Democrats are pissed.

No one trusts anyone.

Both side's politicians are full of shit.

There is a general consensus that the elites are fucking over the people at large.

The republicans tried to purge their own party with the "tea party" and similar things.

Democrats only see this form their perspective but they don't realize that a fair amount of the animus was directed at the establishment republicans which is why the establishment doesn't like the tea party.

The democrats tried to purge their own party with stuff like code pink, occupy wall street, and now black lives matter.

And all of this is failing. The Establishment of both parties is very good at stonewalling this stuff. Black Lives Matter shows up to a Bernie speech and basically takes it over.

They try the same thing at a Hillary speech and they don't even get in the front door.

Think about that.

And that's basically what has been going on. So what is Donald Trump?

In my view, he's a purgative. A drug you take to induce vomiting. You accidentally eat poison... it has to get out. So you take a purgative... and you vomit.

The Tea Party failed, because it was subverted by the Establishment.  I was a fan of "Vote Them All Out", but that failed because the Establishment funded the primary races to keep reformers out.

The Slashdot commenter puts his finger on the dynamic that Trump has tapped into.  Everyone hates the government and the politicians.  Everyone.  Up until now it's been irrelevant, since the Establishment has not allowed any alternative.

But Trump doesn't need them, and doesn't want them.

Julius Caesar was a master of New Media, back in the Roman Republic days.  His Gallic War was widely distributed in Rome (by Caesar's allies) and became wildly popular.  Caesar looked different from the corrupt Senate establishment.  People were sick of the Status Quo.

Caesar didn't need the Senate, because he had the public.  When it was a choice of the Senatus or the Populusque Romanus, the Status Quo collapsed.  Whether that was a Good Thing or a Bad Thing has been the subject of debate for two millennia.

Adams again:

If you’re keeping score, in the past month Trump has bitch-slapped the entire Republican Party, redefined our expectations of politics, focused the national discussion on immigration, proposed the only new idea for handling ISIS, and taken functional control of FOX News. And I don’t think he put much effort into it.

My estimation of Trump has gone way, way up.  This is new, and significant, and I'm not sure if any of the other candidates have any idea how to deal with him other than hoping that he gets bored and leaves, or makes a set of gaffes that will cause him to implode.  That's not looking like where the smart money is betting.

Would a Trump Presidency be a Good Thing or a Bad Thing?  There's a pretty good chance that we're fixin' to find out.  But Trump is focused on what the market wants, and what the political market wants right now is a change from the Status Quo.  And quite frankly, there are quite a few Agencies where "You're Fired" would not only be effective in correcting the path the Republic is on, but would be wildly popular with the Populusque Americanus.

40 years of the Rocky Horror Picture Show

Peter noticed the anniversary, which I'd totally missed:

It's become the longest-running movie in history: literally, it's always been playing in a cinema somewhere in the world since that date. No other film in entertainment history can make that claim over so long a period. In fact, RHPS has been called 'the most iconic cult movie of all time'.

I think I first went to see it in the late '70s, with 2cents.  It was an eye-opener: not so much the movie (which was funny-in-a-schlocky-way) but the audience participation part.  There were accepted catch phrases that the audience would holler at the screen: "Where's your neck?" (at the narrator).  "Ass****!" at the male lead (Barry Bostwick; I could never watch his later performance as George Washington without hearing that whispering in the back of my head).  You would fling props at the screen: rice at the wedding scene, toast at the banquet when Dr. Frank N. Furter (played by Tim Curry; I couldn't get that image out of my mind when I saw him in his later role in Hunt For Red October).

A couple years later, 2cents and I were at another screening.  There were a group of guys in the row in front of us, and one of them was clearly at the movie for the first time - they were explaining all the audience participation parts to him.  At the banquet scene, things played out sort of like this:

His friends, to him:  The toast - where's the toast?

Him: I don't have it.  I ate it.

2cents (and me), pointing at him: Ass****!

Good times, good times.

If you were a RHPS fan, click through to Peter's post, which will be a waltz down memory lane.

Alan Jackson - Chattahoochee

Vickery Creek, flowing towards the Chattahoochee.  Photo copyright Borepatch

I can walk from Camp Borepatch to the Chattahoochee river.  There are very nice trails through National Forrest parkland (the picture here is from this parkland), there's a lively riverside activity scene on the river.  In all the years I've lived here, I'd never gone tubing on the 'Hooch.  So we went last weekend.

Remember, it's August, so it's hotter than a hoochie coochie.  You bet there's a country music song about that.

Alan Jackson was one of the stars that blazed brightly in the 1990s, with 35 Billboard #1 country hits.  This was one, which won CMA song of the year in 1993.  As a Georgia boy, he was familiar with the 'Hooch.  Asked about the song, he said:

It's a song about having fun, growing up. and coming of age in a small town - which really applies to anyone across the country, not just by the Chattahoochee. We never thought it would be as big as it's become."

Chattahoochee (Songwriters: Alan Jackson, Jim McBride)

Way down yonder on the Chattahoochee
It gets hotter than a hoochie coochie
We laid rubber on the Georgie asphalt
We got a little crazy but we never got caught

Down by the river on a friday night
A pyramid of cans in the pale moonlight
Talking 'bout cars and dreaming 'bout women
Never had a plan just a livin' for the minute
Yeah way down yonder on the Chattahoochee
Never knew how much that muddy water meant to me
But I learned how to swim and I learned how I was
A lot about livin' and a litttle 'bout love

Well we fogged up the windows in my old chevy
I was willing but she wasn't ready
So a settled for a burger and a grape snowcone
Dropped her off early but I didn't go home

Down by the river on a friday night
A pyramid of cans in the pale moonlight
Talking 'bout cars and dreaming 'bout women
Never had a plan just a livin' for the minute
Yeah way down yonder on the Chattahoochee
Never knew how much that muddy water meant to me
But I learned how to swim and I learned how I was
A lot about livin' and a little 'bout love

Way down yonder on the Chattahoochee
It gets hotter than a hoochie coochie
We laid rubber on the Georgie asphalt
We got a little crazy but we never got caught

Well we fogged up the windows in my old chevy
I was willing but she wasn't ready
So a settled for a burger and a grape snowcone
Dropped her off early but I didn't go home

Down by the river on a friday night
A pyramid of cans in the pale moonlight
Talking 'bout cars and dreaming 'bout women
Never had a plan just a livin' for the minute
Yeah way down yonder on the Chattahoochee
Never knew how much that muddy water meant to me
But I learned how to swim and I learned how I was
A lot about livin' and a little 'bout love

Grumble

I seem to be burning through vacation days getting Camp Borepatch fixed up to sell.  Everything takes longer, i guess.

Not more expensive - that seems to be tracking nicely.  Well, closely ...

Ah well - mustn't grumble.  I smell coffee.  Yay, coffee!

A metaphor on Megyn Kelly's approach to Donald Trump