48F and you can see your breath this AM. Clear skies and should warm up. Good day to do yard and garden work. So of course I’ll be driving around and probably not get to the garden.
The march to war continues. The world economy teeters on the edge. The soft coup attempt continues, and the plotters are desperate to win, because they are faced with ruin if they don’t.
Gah, I woke up dreaming I was caught in the zombie apocalypse, and realized a couple of things.
– if you are carrying armor, ammo, and weapons, you aren’t carrying enough food, or anything else.
-if you are fighting on foot or from a vehicle you REALLY need suppressed weapons.
-if you don’t have somewhere to go, you are just a refugee.
-a loaded vehicle outside the city limit waiting for you could save your life (hello locker 9).
-never split the party.
nick
All good points …
Locker 9 was a good read
————-
44f and sunny here in Memphis.
Prediction for highs in the mid 70s today and tomorrow.
The sod the landscaper laid last month is beginning to green up.
The rest of the lawn needs it’s first trim of the year.
Yesterday almost felt like summer (not the most pleasant time here) at over 90F. Today back down to 80F and 65F predicted for tomorrow.
Typical California (ht to Woodpile Report)
http://reason.com/reasontv/2018/04/02/californias-new-recreational-marijuana-m
36º and cloudy here. Not much to report, but we’re rolling on.
Owners are
fightingdiscussing the replacement for the greenscreen ERP system. We’ll see how that goes.The first generation builds it. The second generation grows it. The third generation kills it. I would think we might have skipped a generation had not gen 2 come through some pretty tough times in the past 20 years.
Can’t believe the management push-back against turning on Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) on O365. Yes, the users will see a small change BUT it will stop the daily attacks via OWA using captured credentials. Working these daily attacks is taking all our security teams time and disrupting business processes. It seems like a no-brain decision but the concern is that the sales staff is so incompetent they won’t be able to provide the passcode sent via TXT when asked. Not surprisingly, we were forced to drop MFA using RSA tokens a few years back because sales staff couldn’t understand how to use the tokens or regularly lost them.
Not surprisingly, we were forced to drop MFA using RSA tokens a few years back because sales staff couldn’t understand how to use the tokens or regularly lost them.
I remember some kind of compromise with RSA’s tokens before I left the Death Star, about 10 years ago, but I’ve been out of the security game for a while.
I will admit some bias. RSA’s sales staff tried to have me fired from DST around that time. I insisted on holding them to a 10 year contract for support and maintenance on BSAFE, and the sales guy wanted to make quota on a new library.
At one point, I remember a BSAFE revision rolling in, say ~ 2006, which left all of the OpenSSL symbols exposed. Support (in the form of having someone to sue when SHTF) and the ability to use their logo is about all RSA is good for IMHO. Many pieces of BSAFE didn’t even work right at that time, including 3DES and Diffie-Hellman.
Greg: RSA root cert was compromised a few years back. Very confidence inspiring – not. I haven’t delt with them myself. We currently have SecureAuth for our Identity management tool and MFA for our VPN. They have a very nice session threat model that looks at a large number of issues like geolocation, geovelocity, and device fingerprinting. We did trial a keystroke analysis tool for couple of years but it was very device specific and required Java client. We had no false positives but plenty of false negatives when users were tired, drunk, or high or using an unfamiliar keyboard.
3 hours gone today to the ofd project. I can’t get the dam tracker to connect consistently. I don’t know if the problem is the tracker, the USB card, drivers, or some other issue. I’ve gotten it connected twice now, for short periods.
I’ll try again later, gotta go do some work……
n
A followup to a previous comment:
Starvation issues in universities? The real college problem is obesity.
A couple of excerpts:
“Some findings should have triggered the “dumpster data” alarm. Temple/HOPE “found that homosexual students were at much greater risk of basic needs insecurity than heterosexual students, but that bisexual students were at the highest risk.” More than 10% of the respondents from four-year colleges labeled themselves “bisexual,” and half of bisexual students allegedly go hungry.
“Are they too busy cavorting with both genders to eat, or what? If there were a national conspiracy to starve bisexuals, we would’ve heard about it before now.”
And:
“The Post noted in 2012 that “the typical student today spends 27 hours a week in study and class time, roughly the same time commitment expected of students in a modern full-day kindergarten.” But expecting students to use free time to get a job to feed themselves is beyond the pale.
“Instead, the only viable solution is a new federal assistance program. A Post article on the Temple/HOPE study noted that “advocates have called on the federal government to provide free or reduced-cost meals at colleges, as is already done in primary and secondary schools.” So politicians should treat adults like helpless children, no matter how old they become or how much aid they already receive?”
Instead, the only viable solution is a new federal assistance program. A Post article on the Temple/HOPE study noted that “advocates have called on the federal government to provide free or reduced-cost meals at colleges, as is already done in primary and secondary schools.
Popping open a can of ravioli is too much to ask?
The next step is to make restaurants take food stamps.
3 hours gone today to the ofd project. I can’t get the dam tracker to connect consistently. I don’t know if the problem is the tracker, the USB card, drivers, or some other issue. I’ve gotten it connected twice now, for short periods.
I think that the ThinkPad line picked up real USB 3.0 ports with Haswell in the T440 series.
Is the tracker drawing power from the port? If so, is an option available for a separate power supply?
I doubt that the ExpressCard USB 3.0 interface is designed to provide as much current as the spec allows devices to draw. PCIe cards I’ve seen for desktop PCs have a separate plug to connect directly to the power supply.
“L.A. County wants to help build guest houses in backyards — for homeless people”
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-homeless-tiny-house-20180411-story.html
Um, no. I can think of a multitude of problems such as insurance, maintenance, water, sewer, electricity, privacy, etc, etc, etc.
Hat tip to:
http://drudgereport.com/
Um, no. I can think of a multitude of problems such as insurance, maintenance, water, sewer, electricity, privacy, etc, etc, etc.
Weed is legal in all of the states mentioned in the article. I don’t think that is a coincidence.
Multnomah County, OR. How many “granny flat” homeless houses are there in Linus Torvalds’ neighborhood in Lake Oswego. Talk about NIMBY. The McDonald’s don’t even have Wifi there, lest you “loiter”.
Also, the “Tiny House” meme needs to go away. People can’t live that way for long, and most of the homeless are already mentally ill.
[ Update: My bad — Lake Oswego is in Clackamas County ]
That is nuts. I am not entirely unsympathetic to the plight of the homeless. The pastor of the church our family attends is currently living in someone’s guest house, because his house burned down, and they are currently rebuilding. So I could see having a property as a guest house, and letting someone live there for a period of time rent free, but a random homeless person? No.I now have something nice to say about our subdivision’s HOA. They would never let that happen.
If you want to help homeless people, help them fix whatever is wrong with their life so they can stop being homeless. If someone is homeless because they need to be a friend of Bill W. then take them to a meeting. If you give them money you’re buying a drunk a drink, and not only is that a waste of money, it’s wrong.
My father in-law (since deceased) used to run a rescue mission in San Antonio. Many homeless people stopped for a couple of nights for a meal and a place to sleep. Several of these people had masters degrees. All did not want a job, did not want a home, did not want any responsibilities. They were homeless because that is the life they chose. Just live day to day and sponge off whomever they could for the night. Putting shacks anywhere is not going change any of that mindset.
I also wonder how many of the people on the LA city council would place such a shack in their backyard. I can probably count the number using nothing but the digit ZERO.
Weed is legal in all of the states mentioned in the article. I don’t think that is a coincidence.
Are you blaming societies decrepitude on weed ? I suspect that there is a way bigger problem with alcohol. But, weed is a major contributor.
Stayed home today with a stomach ache and a head ache. I don’t know what I have but I sure don’t want to share it with anyone. Currently watching the Astros lose in Minnesota on my DirecTV DVR.
That is one problem if we drop DirecTV, I will lose the Astros. That would suck. Plus I guess that I would need to get a Tivo or two so the wife can time shift General Hospital.
My 15.5 year old dog is laying on her sofa bed, sleeping with her eyes open. That is just weird. I just made myself two pieces of sourdough toast and she demanded her fair share, then promptly crashed.
You have not visited East TN where meth is the drug of choice among the great unwashed. Many a single wide up some holler where meth is manufactured daily. Freshness guaranteed. The highway mowing machines have more than a few times encountered a single bottle meth production with their mowers resulting in an unpleasant surprise. Hazmat crew and complete wash down of the mower and the operator closing part of the highway in the process. The losers with three teeth in their entire family plant the bottles at known locations that are not on their property retrieving the bottles under the cover of darkness. Sometimes the timing is off and the mowers get there first.
My initial, and sustained reaction to people that die of drug overdoses, so what. Got them out of the gene pool and saved the state and county a lot of money for legal fees and jail time.
My initial, and sustained reaction to people that die of drug overdoses, so what. Got them out of the gene pool and saved the state and county a lot of money for legal fees and jail time.
Drug abuse is a personal choice. So is alcohol abuse. Yes, these personal choices affect other people but not, usually, in a direct way.
The War on Drugs ™ has been lost. The sooner that we realize this, the better. We are filling our prisons (state and federal) with non-violent offenders. Oh well, this will come to a head when the Dollar dies.
Are you blaming societies decrepitude on weed ? I suspect that there is a way bigger problem with alcohol. But, weed is a major contributor.
Oh, WA State definitely has an alcohol problem. Costco’s lawyers wrote the current liquor laws — I am not kidding.
Live in one of those states for any length of time and you’ll realize weed decriminalization probably isn’t the answer to the drug problem either. Lower the penalty for possession to a $70 fine which covers a database of users searchable by anyone.
My initial, and sustained reaction to people that die of drug overdoses, so what. Got them out of the gene pool and saved the state and county a lot of money for legal fees and jail time.
As hard-hearted as it may seem, I have to agree. It seems to me that for the vast majority of “substance abusers”, any help they receive merely serves to delay the inevitable.
Drug abuse is a personal choice. So is alcohol abuse. Yes, these personal choices affect other people but not, usually, in a direct way.
it’s the “usually” that is the real problem. If they’d slowly kill themselves in private, as opposed to driving drunk, say, and taking out a car full of people in a head-on crash from which they walk away unscathed, or committing a series of petty and not-so-petty crimes to fund their increasingly-expensive drug habit, life would be good, at least for their potential victims–but no, they insist on inflicting themselves and their vices on others.
Live in one of those states for any length of time and you’ll realize weed decriminalization probably isn’t the answer to the drug problem either. Lower the penalty for possession to a $70 fine which covers a database of users searchable by anyone.
No, because that just reduces to spying on ones neighbors. We need to get law enforcement away from drugs. Don’t even get me started on hospice care for the dying. In fact, if one is dying, one should be able to go to a hospice and get a morphine overload.
After all, should attending an AA session be publicized to the populace at general ? Of course not. Neither should drug usage be publicized.
BTW, Texas has a huge weed problem. It is almost as much as the alcohol usage. I am 57 years of age and can remember going to concerts in the 1970s in Houston. The amount of drugs there was simply amazing. The amount of drugs has not dropped in the slightest since then. In fact, I suspect the amount of drug usage has doubled or quintupled since then.
The card has an additional cord that lets you vampire power from another USB port, so there should be enough power. It has worked twice, so I know it CAN work. Just have to figure out why it’s not reliable or even repeatable.
Very frustrating.
n
Had UPS lose a package this week. Sent two identical packages, only one arrived. The other never got loaded on a truck for delivery. So I sent a replacement and filed a claim. First time I’ve had a problem with UPS.
For those of you so interested I have uploaded a video of my steam train experience where I was able to operate a steam locomotive. It was in Ely Nevada at the Nevada Northern Railroad on September 15 of 2017.
Here is the link to the video.
An awesome experience and glad that I was able to do the experience. Massive machine, lots of power, lots of heat.
I think I told you about this before. Just got around to loading the video to YouTube.
“should attending an AA session be publicized to the populace at general ? ”
It is though. State mandates AA attendance when you get popped for DUI. AA violates their A principles and monitors you and reports you by name to the state. I’m NOT a big fan of AA or any of the other XA spinnoffs. As far as I can tell, they sold out. Plus it’s just replacing one addiction and set of behaviours with another set (albeit more healthy). There is a ton of evidence that it doesn’t work in the long term for most people. There are other treatment options with better track records. Most of the success stories I’ve heard happened in spite of the program rather than because of it.
If it works for you, great, but the state has and had no business co-opting it.
n
No, because that just reduces to spying on ones neighbors. We need to get law enforcement away from drugs.
The stuff is far from harmless, and I’d want to know if the neighbors were into it and dumb enough to get caught.
Among other downsides, once possession of weed is legal, the hash oil explosions start, particularly in wealthy areas. The big one before we left Portland was a 6000 sq ft house … in Linus Torvald’s neighborhood!
In fact, if one is dying, one should be able to go to a hospice and get a morphine overload.
That’s pretty much the approach by Hospice of Tampa Bay. I tell friends to get back to Tampa as soon as possible if their parents end up under the care of that group.
BTW, Texas has a huge weed problem.
Yes. One manager on my last job had a possession arrest mugshot online.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and that picture explained a lot of her behavior. Since we dealt with Payment Card Industry protocols, I’m amazed that she kept her job, but I guess it was okay because she was not “hands on” with any customer data.
At the new job, we’re subject to random drug tests even though none have ever been administered. All it will take is one accident at a toll plaza, however.
My attitude is always, “Bring it on.”
“Wanna watch me fill the cup? Oooh. Kinky. I like it”
The ability to pass a drug test is worth a couple of $k extra a year, and pretty much the ante’ for any construction work for an oil company. So if you can’t pass, you won’t be getting the good jobs…
n
(another reason for self employment)
As I was driving around this afternoon, I was listening to our local college station, to Farrakan’s Nation of Islam regional rep, who’s name has both Abdul and Mohammed in it. Smart guy, but he’s pushing on rope trying to get his black constituency to change their behavior. Anyway, I like some of his ideas, and applaud him for taking on the black establishment as well as white.
His interesting idea today was that the history of the US is the struggle between Big Labor and Big Business to control the government. That’s interesting enough as a perspective, but then he takes it a step farther. He posits that the current DC drama is the old line money using the power of the .gov (and regulation) to fence in the new money (tech billionaires.) Old money is connected millionaires but the new tech money is billionaires.
He also emphatically believes we’re seeing the run up to WW3 right before our eyes.
It was very interesting that someone with a background soooo different, could come to some of the same conclusions.
I listen to his “Connect the Dots” program whenever I can. Always interesting.
nick
_Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen (Vorkosigan Saga)_ by Lois McMaster Bujold
https://www.amazon.com/gp/bookseries/B00CKDJHSG/
Book number 17 of a 17 book space opera romance action series. I read the well printed and bound mass market paperback. I suspect that this might be the last book in this critically acclaimed series (five Hugos including best series !) but I really have no idea. This is first book in the series to be rated less than 4 stars on Big River. If there are any more books in the series then I will definitely purchase and read them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorkosigan_Saga
Ms. Bujold goes after two topics centrally in this book which probably contribute to the lower Big River rating. Bisexuality and uterine replicators. I don’t agree with the bisexual lifestyle but I really don’t care what other people do. I have no problem whatsoever with uterine replicators but I suspect that many deeply religious people might. In fact, having uterine replicators might lower the chance of loss of the child and/or mother during the birthing process. I know way too personally about this issue.
Note that this book is not so much about space opera than it is about sexual behavior and child bearing in a highly technological society. The book is also about building a new society upon a pioneer planet that is part of a small Empire.
BTW, Jo Walton, a highly acknowledged SF book reviewer and author, wrote a nice summary of the first 13 books in 2009:
https://www.tor.com/2009/04/17/choose-again-and-change-lois-mcmaster-bujolds-vorkosigan-saga/
My rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 3.7 out of 5 stars (717 reviews)
“Wanna watch me fill the cup? Oooh. Kinky. I like it”
The refineries and process plants use a single hair for drug diagnosis now. They can tell if there was any illegal drug usage in the last 30 days in minutes.
Mr Ray:
Congrats on that ride! I’ve been on the Strasburg RR in PA, the Pike’s Peak cog RR and a couple of trips in sleeper cars from NY to Chicago back when I was in short pants. They sure as heck didn’t let me drive! AmTrak 90 miles inta Chicago just isn’t the same.
Not directly related to drugs, but related to “things you wonder if the police should do”: There was a news segment last night about a guy who has been arrested for chatting up young girls on the internet – pretty explicit sex chat. The thing is: anyone with a brain knows that the “young girls” willing to chat sex on the Internet are essentially all police plants. This particular guy was chatting up a 77 year old retired dude.
His claim: it was just his personal fantasy world, and since no actual girls were involved (though he couldn’t know that for certain), where’s the crime? On the other hand, they arrested him when he tried to set up a physical meeting with the girl, so maybe his fantasies got the better of him.
I do see protecting kids, and there certainly are some smooth-talking scumbags out there. However, are these police-plants really a good use of resources? When does it cross the line into entrapment? For example, in this case “she” not only participated in the chat, but even sent him pics.
And on the gripping hand: The prosecutors in Switzerland are apparently human. This guy is married with kids, and just the arrest has mucked up his life quite a lot (for example, he’s lost his job). The prosecutor figures he’s a one-off idiot who’s learned his lesson, so he’s being released with a fine.
I have ridden several trains around in many areas including Pikes Peak. Best, besides operating myself, was the Durango-Silverton train in Colorado. Narrow gauge, steam, three hour trip from Duranga to Silverton with a stop for water on the way up, and a couple of stops to drop off people at some resorts. Will be taking another excursion train this fall over in North Carolina through the mountains.
Worst was Amtrak from Los Angeles CA to Klamath Falls OR. Noisy train with kids constantly opening the doors between cars and running up and down the aisle. Long delay in Oakland because freight had priority. Someone through a rock at the window and busted the outer glass and the inner Plexiglas stopped the rock. Scared the crap out of me even being one seat in front of the break. Train was four hours late arriving which really screwed up our schedule.
Have ridden dozens of trains in Germany. All were nice. The best is 1st class on the ICE running at 120MPH. Smooth, quiet, and generally on time. Of all the times we have ridden we were delayed once due to mechanical failure which required the dispatching of a new engine. With the German Rail Pass 1st class is the only way to travel on the trains. Only about $100 more for the seven days worth of travel we purchase. Any train, all day, any 7 days in a 30 day period, anywhere in Germany, 1st class, two adults for about $600.00. Really quite a bargain.
When we go to Croatia this year I am going to have to rent a car as we are going to an island for the wedding of a former exchange student. Was checking online and a rental car is only about $12.00 a day and insurance is $10.00 a day. We will need the rental as there is almost no public transportation on the island. We will be there for seven days so fairly cheap to rent.
Same happens in the US. Idiots take it too far. Arrange to meet in a hotel room and the police show up and bust the person.
When the police ask the individual to do something illegal. Had the impostor asked the creepy dude to meet then that becomes entrapment. If the creep asked the impostor then it is not entrapment. The police can lie all they want with impunity but what they cannot do is ask a person to perform an illegal act.
There have been a couple of prostitution stings in the local area. Female (and one male to trap females and queers) posing as hookers trying to trap people. That to me is a bigger waste of resources then trying to trap child molesters. If someone wants to pay someone else for coitus (or whatever) and that other person is willing, go for it. It is an act between two consenting adults. There are no victims. One gets what they want, the other gets what they want. Leave them alone.
The refineries and process plants use a single hair for drug diagnosis now. They can tell if there was any illegal drug usage in the last 30 days in minutes.
Oh. Darn.
I’ve always wondered — how sensitive are the hair tests? Walking to the office yesterday, I passed through a cloud of smoke wafting over from a group of urban outdoorsmen camped in what we call the “murder parking” across the street. That stuff had to be in my hair.
Not directly related to drugs, but related to “things you wonder if the police should do”: There was a news segment last night about a guy who has been arrested for chatting up young girls on the internet – pretty explicit sex chat. The thing is: anyone with a brain knows that the “young girls” willing to chat sex on the Internet are essentially all police plants. This particular guy was chatting up a 77 year old retired dude.
In Florida, the Polk County (starts at the next freeway exit west of Disney World) Sheriff is famous for his sting operations to catch pedophiles chatting up young girls online, but the arrests happen when the morons show up at the house where the undercover detectives are set up for the day.
(another reason for self employment)
We had an interesting dynamic at my last job. One manager had a possession mugshot online which was an open secret in the office. Her manager was ex-Army/ex-cop, complete with the puckered sphincter attitude where all perps -er- employees are guilty until proven innocent. Both filled hiring quotas so neither was going anywhere.
If I hadn’t been at the bottom of that reporting chain, it would have been an interesting situation to watch.
Not going to affect anything. They are looking for material that gets in the hair while it is growing. Thus they can tell if you have used drugs in the past the length of time depending on the length of the hair.
Most places will test again using another method when a positive comes back. All it would take is one termination because of a false positive where the accused hires a private lab to do the test again and it comes back clean. Wrongful termination lawsuit slam dunk. Thus the hair test is the first level of screening. There are never false negatives, only false positives.
In practice, possibly because of the illicit nature, prostitution is generally slavery here. It often involves kids or illegals held against their will and raped all day long, every day of the week.
WRT entrapment, the FBI and local popo discovered in the 70s that it’s a lot easier to bust crims if they create them themselves. And they get to play act at work and act like ‘operators’ when the takedown comes. The only terrorists the FBI stopped were ones they’ve groomed for years. The joke in the gunnie/patriot/sovereign citizen or any other ‘movement’ is that there are more Feds than members. This was apparently true when the Klan was big, and was certainly true at the Bundy ranch trial. The other question to ask is “How do you spot the Fed? –they’re the ones encouraging you to commit and illegal act.”
As to creating the crims, look at the fat guy they killed in NYC. There were 13 cops involved in the arrest of ONE man, who’s crime was …. …. …. not collecting tax on cigarettes. Didn’t pay the vig so the syndicate took him down. Only the syndicate is the one making the laws and not ‘outlaws’.
n
In short, there is LOTS of real, actual, damaging to people crime out there that should be a priority, not this movie BS.
n
@Nick: That’s my suspicion as well, which is why I posted about the sex-chat guy. I frankly suspect (but cannot prove) that most tween girls are not interested in any sort of sex-chat; that the majority of accounts doing this are police plants. Who are thereby encouraging behavior in people who would otherwise hit a dry well and give up.
Way back in the day, AOL introduced the idea of ‘chat rooms’. In theory, you would enter or start a chat room for your friends, for woodworking, or corvettes, or whatever.
In practice, it was all sex chat. There were jokes about learning to type one handed…
The early chat rooms were where LOL, ROFLMAO, BRB, AFK and emoticons got their start.
The chats often just disintegrated into “Age, sex, location” checks (which is when someone would ask those of the assembled chatters. It was about the same time as the classic comic “On the internet, no one knows you are a dog.” And an ASL check was as pointless as anything, since the majority were lying about at least one of those attributes.
Entrapment is a very slippery slope, and in my mind, completely unnecessary given the number of actual crimes out there to investigate.
n
Entrapment is a very slippery slope, and in my mind, completely unnecessary given the number of actual crimes out there to investigate.
But it looks so good on the front page of the local newspaper’s website !
https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/houston-police-sex-trade-pimp-mugshots-march-2018-12828661.php
It is though. State mandates AA attendance when you get popped for DUI. AA violates their A principles and monitors you and reports you by name to the state. I’m NOT a big fan of AA or any of the other XA spinnoffs. As far as I can tell, they sold out. Plus it’s just replacing one addiction and set of behaviours with another set (albeit more healthy). There is a ton of evidence that it doesn’t work in the long term for most people. There are other treatment options with better track records. Most of the success stories I’ve heard happened in spite of the program rather than because of it.
Don’t drive drunk. There is a high corollary between driving drunk and killing people with large metal objects.
I’ve been watching “Mom” on tv lately. The show is about a mother and her mother living together and actively going through AA. One of their friends is collecting one day chits by the drawer full at the moment. They are not glorifying her behavior whatsoever, in fact, it is quite sad.