Year: 2007

If This Virus Were Any More Clever, You Could Put a Tail on it and Call it a Weasel

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Here is an interesting story, it appears that there is a virus that has Internet Explorer launching Firefox, which installs the payload.

If Firefox encounters the payload directly, it will stop it cold, but when it’s passed along by IE, not so much.

This virus probably has a couple more weeks life, just because Mozilla and Microflaccid are busy finger pointing. Clever idea this.

The saying about success having many parents but failure being an orphan seems fitting here. Window Snyder, who heads security at Mozilla, wrote today (http://blog.mozilla.com/security/2007/07/10/security-issue-in-url-protocol-handling-on-windows/) that Mozilla developers will patch Firefox so it no longer accepts bad data from IE. But she stressed that only people browsing with the Microsoft browser were vulnerable to the attack.

“We recommend that people use Firefox and as always take care when browsing unknown websites,” she wrote.

For its part, Microsoft representatives said company researchers have “investigated the claim of a vulnerability in Internet Explorer and found that this is not a vulnerability in a Microsoft product.” Jesper Johansson, a former senior security strategist for Microsoft, similarly argues that “most definitely” the problem isn’t caused by IE.

The Depressing Thing is That Someone Will Get Tenure for This.

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Someone got paid to come up with this?

Women prefer well-built blokes: official
By Lester Haines
Published Tuesday 10th July 2007 14:44 GMT

Here’s some good news for the gym monsters among you: women are “predisposed to prefer muscularity in men”, according to researchers at UCLA.

The team’s report, published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, suggests “muscles in men are akin to elaborate tail feathers in male peacocks” which “attract females looking for a virile mate”, as Reuters puts it.

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Google for Idiots

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Too funny for words. Google needs to use this in their next Superbowl ad.

Google in Colorado safe cracking caper
By Cade Metz in San Francisco
Published Tuesday 10th July 2007 19:49 GMT

It’s true. Google can help with anything. Minutes before they operned several locked safes at a “family fun center” in Colorado Springs, a team of masked bandits sat down at a nearby PC and Googled “safe-cracking.” “They brought up a site called ‘How to Open Safes,'” Colorado Springs detective Chuck Ackerman told The Register.

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ESA study finds in-flight oxidiser collection possible-10/07/2007-London-Flight International

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This sounds very similar to the HOTOL concept in the early 1980s, and it appears that they are using cryogenic separation. They might save space and weight by using another form of oxygen separation, but they would still need the heat exchangers for making LOX.

ESA study finds in-flight oxidiser collection possible
By Rob Coppinger

In-flight oxidiser collection possible, says ESA study

A European Space Agency-funded study has concluded that air liquefaction plants for a space transportation system’s first-stage carrier aircraft are possible within the mass limits required.

The first stage would collect air, liquefy it and separate the nitrogen, producing 10kg/s (22lb/s) with a 10,000kg (22,000lb) on-board liquefaction plant.

The advantage of such a system is that the preferred liquid-oxygen propellant does not have to be carried from the ground. Once collected, the oxygen-enriched liquefied air is stored in the second-stage reusable orbiter vehicle.

The plant’s main mass drivers are the heat exchangers, of which there would be three. These have been a focus of the ESA study.

The study, involving Universite Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), developed the two-stage launch system concept that incorporates liquefaction.

That system has a dual-hull, hydrogen-fuelled aircraft using six General Electric 90b engines as the carrier aircraft. Between its two fuselages under the wing, it would carry an orbiter vehicle fuelled only with liquid hydrogen with a total mass of 90,000kg.

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Ten Schoolgirls Murdered for Bush’s Oedipal Issues

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This is what George W. Bush’s Oedipal obsession with Iraq has bought us: the Taliban taking over Afghanistan again.

As War Enters Classrooms, Fear Grips Afghans
By BARRY BEARAK

QALAI SAYEDAN, Afghanistan, July 9 — With their teacher absent, 10 students were allowed to leave school early. These were the girls the gunmen saw first, 10 easy targets walking hand-in-hand through the blue metal gate and on to the winding dirt road.

The staccato of machine-gun fire pelted through the stillness. A 13-year-old named Shukria was hit in the arm and the back, and then teetered into the soft brown of an adjacent wheat field. Zarmina, her 12-year-old sister, ran to her side, listening to the wounded girl’s precious breath and trying to help her stand.

But Shukria was too heavy to lift, and the two gunmen, sitting astride a single motorbike, sped closer.

As Zarmina scurried away, the men took a more studied aim at those they already had shot, killing Shukria with bullets to her stomach and heart. Then the attackers seemed to succumb to the frenzy they had begun, forsaking the motorbike and fleeing on foot in a panic, two bobbing heads — one tucked into a helmet, the other swaddled by a handkerchief — vanishing amid the earthen color of the wheat.

Six students were shot here on the afternoon of June 12, two of them fatally. The Qalai Sayedan School — considered among the very best in the central Afghan province of Logar — reopened only last weekend, but even with Kalashnikov-toting guards at the gate, only a quarter of the 1,600 students have dared to return.

Shootings, beheadings, burnings and bombings: these are all tools of intimidation used by the Taliban and others to shut down hundreds of Afghanistan’s public schools. To take aim at education is to make war on the government.

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Snark of the Day

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Courtesy of Glenn Greenwald, who noted a comment on his blog:

As Gen. Apathy noted in comments, having read the entire Murray [Washington Post National Political Reporter Shailagh Murray] chat from yesterday: ‘Every answer she gave was smarmy, sarcastic, pedantic and lacking any serious insight.’ Indeed, the whole thing reads like a tongue-clucking rant from a 12-year-old Maureen Dowd, which is saying quite a bit since Maureen Dowd, in her full-blown adult self, is more than sufficiently adolescent.

FWIW, Glenn Greenwald, Esq. is generally pretty serious, though a good read.

His expertise is constitutional law.

You Have to Destroy Army You Have, Not the Army You Want.

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It appears that the US Army has missed its monthly goal by 15%.

It should be noted that the army has consistently backpedaled on these goals, in order not to make the shortfalls sound too bad too.

It got only 5/6 of the men it needs, and people are leaving the Army, Guard and Reserves as fast as they can.

Then you have the people who are staying only because they don’t want to leave their buddies while combat continues in Iraq.

Do I feel a draft in here?

Gonzalez Lied to Congress

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Gonzalez should be under indictment.

Gonzales Was Told of FBI Violations
After Bureau Sent Reports, Attorney General Said He Knew of No Wrongdoing

By John Solomon
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 10, 2007; Page A01

As he sought to renew the USA Patriot Act two years ago, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales assured lawmakers that the FBI had not abused its potent new terrorism-fighting powers. “There has not been one verified case of civil liberties abuse,” Gonzales told senators on April 27, 2005.

Six days earlier, the FBI sent Gonzales a copy of a report that said its agents had obtained personal information that they were not entitled to have. It was one of at least half a dozen reports of legal or procedural violations that Gonzales received in the three months before he made his statement to the Senate intelligence committee, according to internal FBI documents released under the Freedom of Information Act.

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Ummmm….Conrad Black is Guilty as Sin! What’s Your f%$#ing Problem?

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Sometimes the thought of a jury of one’s peers is kind of scary.

Black jury deadlocked
By Ameet Sachdev
Tribune staff reporter
Published July 10, 2007, 2:54 PM CDT

A Chicago federal jury weighing fraud charges against former Sun-Times publisher Conrad Black said today it was deadlocked.

‘We have discussed and deliberated on all the evidence and are still unable to reach a unanimous verdict on one or more counts. Please advise,’ jurors wrote in a note to the U.S. District Judge Amy St. Eve this afternoon.

In court, St. Eve responded by rereading a portion of the jury instructions which advised the panel to act in good faith and attempt to reach a verdict before sending the 9 women and 3 men back to the jury room to continue deliberations.

Tuesday was the ninth day of jury deliberations. The trial began March 20.

It is unclear if the jury has reached a conclusion on any of the 42 charges and four defendants before them.

Black faces 13 criminal charges, including racketeering and mail and wire fraud, tied to accusations that he and associated pocketed more than $60 million from non-compete agreements signed when his company Hollinger International Inc. sold several newspapers. If convicted, the 62-year-old member of the British House of Lords could spend the rest of his life in prison and forfeit much of his fortune.

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Joe Lieberman is the Wanker of EVERY Day

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Seriously, I’m embarrassed to share a religion with this bloke. He is a Shanda before the Goyim.

He’s been full of himself since he ran for president in 2004 (I know what you are saying, it was VP, but in 2000, he was running for Prez in 2004), and now all that is left is bitterness and spite.

He needs a splenectomy, as evidenced by his attack on Harry Reid.

You know, Harry Reid said a while ago that the war in Iraq is lost. It’s wrong. It’s not lost. In fact, I would say we’re beginning to win it. We’ve turned the tide with the new strategy. And in fact, I cannot conceive of a circumstance in which American forces would lose the war in Iraq, on the ground in Iraq. If we lose it, it’s gonna be lost here at home, in a different kind of war for public opinion and political support.

This was without any prompting from radio host Bill “Slot Machine” Bennett.

‘Chicago Sun-Times’ Looks to Redefine Itself as ‘Liberal, Working-Class’ Paper

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I don’t know what this means, but I pray that this means that liberal will be the new black.

‘Chicago Sun-Times’ Looks to Redefine Itself as ‘Liberal, Working-Class’ Paper

By Mark Fitzgerald

Published: July 10, 2007 12:29 PM ET

CHICAGO The Chicago Sun-Times is turning left.

The tabloid that shifted toward political conservatism under the brief ownership of Rupert Murdoch more than two decades ago now says that it is ‘rethinking our stance on several issues, including the most pressing issue facing Americans today: Bush’s war in Iraq.’

Under marching orders from Publisher John Cruickshank and Editor in Chief Michael Cooke, new Editorial Page Editor Cheryl L. Reed introduced a new Commentary section Tuesday with a promise to turn the tabloid back into the liberal-leaning paper it was for decades before the Reagan administration.

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Guilty or No, This Trial is F%$%ed Up

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Kind of like Mumia. I think that Mumia did it, and I think that Mumiw was railroaded.

The trial of Former Gov. Don Siegelman (D-AL) is seriously screwed up.

You have Republicans testifying that it was politically driven. You have a judge who is a long time political enemy of Siegelman, and you have the judge imposing a fine for an offense for which he had been acquitted.

Originally, Siegelman had been ordered to pay the money to reimburse the state for losses based on a warehouse scandal. A jury acquitted Siegelman of charges relating to that scandal, but the prosecution pressed for punishment during the sentencing portion of the trial. The judge changed his mind yesterday, siding with Siegelman’s lawyers.

Judge decided that he had crossed a line in his vengance, I guess.

Still, the fact that HealthSouth CEO Richard Scrushyis going to jail too gives me mixed emotions.

Given the politicization of Justice under Bush and Abu Gonzalez (who ever thought that I would miss John f%$#ing Ashcroft) politics almost certainly played an important roll though.

Never Will You Find a More Retched Hive of Scum and Villany

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Here is an interesting story aboutMark Penn, Hillary Clinton’s main political strategist.

Penn is CEO of the global PR firm Burson-Marsteller, which has a union busting division.

It also turns out that he’s done extensive work for the Tobacco industry and the Nuclear Industry, among other unsavory characters, and his work for tobacco has continued since he has been advising Hillary on her senate campaigns.

You judge politicians by the company they keep, and this guy is bad news, perhaps as bad as the dope dealer and his racist father on the Guiliani campaign.

Great Headlines: Ahmadinejobless

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It’s the hed for a Foreign Policy Magazine article about the Iranian president, and how his general cluelessness is leading to his irrelevancy, and possible removal.

That being said, the article is substantive, and right off, it makes the important point:

Iran’s radical president is sinking fast, and he knows it. Now, there’s only one man who can keep Mahmoud Ahmadinejad out of the unemployment line: George W. Bush.

There has been no greater resource for fundamentalist dictatorships and terrorists than George W. Bush, and his crusade against his father the norms of international behavior.

George W. Bush: Generating capital for terrorists and religious fundamentalists since 2001.