Bill Clinton Could Not Be Reached for Comment...

It's another sign of the Apocalypse. Chatroulette will implement Penis-Recognition Software to protect it's clients from online Wankers.

This is one piece of technology I'm all in favor of. I've never actually used Chatroulette, but from what I've seen of it it appears to be what Microsoft had intended for it's old NetMeeting software; you could chat with a bunch of people, and do so with text and voice-and-video links, and there were some really neat file-sharing programs, and even a Virtual Whiteboard for business meetings. It was pretty cool in the days when Win98 was considered "cutting edge".

I used to play around a bit with NetMeeting in my "Industry" days, and it had a lot of potential except that the bandwidth to make it really work well wasn't available to most home users, and there were some reliability problems that made it impractical for major business use. Right now, what's left of NetMeeting (does Microsoft even still support and market it, anymore?) appears to be the Remote Access features, which Tech Support uses to "take control" of your PC when they're troubleshooting it for you.

I could count upon NetMeeting to be a rather remarkable-but-not-quite-reliable piece of Gee-Whiz high-tech that was fun to play with, but it's major feature was that I could pretty much guarantee there wouldn't be any pedophiles playing Choke the Chicken on the other end, and offering me a peek.

Personally, it's exactly for reasons like this why I stay away from chat rooms of any sort (I went through my AOL chat room phase, thanks. No more!). The anonymity of the Internet gives these disgusting little perverts the opportunity to do that which they wouldn't have the balls to do in real life. It's a sad commentary on the culture when lonely men resort to showing their wankers to complete strangers on the Internet on the remote chance that they'll find someone willing to Indulge the Bulge while they Tickle The Pickle.

Sick bastards.

It's an even sadder commentary when a corporation that could be devoting scarce resources to improving their product or advancing the technology that makes it work, has to instead devote resources to the Problem of Unwanted-Penis-Over-IP.

(H/T Instapundit)

I Wonder What's In Barack Obama's Report?

I saw a TV advertisement recently for a company offering online background checks (I won't provide a link, or name them because I think their service is disgusting and wide open to abuse). Simply stop by their website, drop a credit card number on 'em, and you'll be able to find out if your boyfriend is a convicted pedophile or not. Of if that prospective employee has a history of drug use. Maybe you wish to know if your future father-in-law was ever caught inflagrante delicto with a three-legged poodle, a half-pound of ground pork, and a jackhammer. In fact, you can use this service to find out if someone is a Deadbeat Dad, on a Terrorist Watch List, was ever cited for speeding, littering or spitting on the sidewalk, and their financial status.

Why, that sounds like a great service to have access to, doesn't it? It could save you an awful lot of trouble (or give you the means to get even with your enemies, real and perceived), and if you really need to make certain about that woman sharing your bed, or that cute guy who just asked you out -- or even your hairdresser, dogwalker or podiatrist, should you have nagging doubts about them -- then why not? I mean, peace of mind and all that, right?

The commercial in question made a great show of letting women (specifically) know that there's a lot of cads out there (no shit; they do the same with all the burglar alarm commercials). If you were a devotee of Lifetime television (Where I saw the ad, loooong story) then you already knew there's only two kinds of men in the world; the homicidal/polygamist/sadistic/serial-wife-killer/abuser/rapist and the pussywhipped limpdick who's subservient to ultra-powerful, career-woman wife. The sort who would eat a mile of her shit just to get the chance to sniff at her asshole.The commercial is pretty much aimed at those women -- the paranoid, brain-dead kooks who live and die by the Movie of the Week. The ones who think that all male/female relationships cleave close to the way they're portrayed on TV, who can't separate the fantasy of television from reality. They believe that a rapist lurks about every corner, and that every man is out to "get" her; the service is presented as a valuable tool that no woman who wants to avoid being raped/ripped off/murdered/disappeared/mistreated/disrespected/dumped for a younger model should be without.

Nothing like a little fear-mongering to drive up sales, is there? Besides, if you are the kind of person who really is this paranoid, then you're probably pretty lonely in any case, so the chances of a new boyfriend/girlfriend being a masher -- the chances of there being a new boyfriend/girlfriend AT ALL -- are pretty low.You're either the type that's building a bunker in your basement, or others just notice the crazy in you and give you a wide berth. Get used to it.

Naturally, I can see men using this service, too. And some of them might actually be stalkers -- or like a great many of the women who will use this service, petty idiots with an irrational axes to grind -- who are basically being given a valuable tool. Then there's the racist who doesn't want to hire minorities (more likely to be the Minority who Won't Hire Whitey) so he goes out and uses the reports he pays for hoping they've had even minor brushes with the Law in order to justify not hiring them.

Of course, it never occurs to anyone who would do this that if they're using the service to get the goods on their potential friends and employees, then it stands to reason that someone's doing it to them, too. And judging from the parade of morons who routinely show up on shows like Judge Judy, Judge Jeannine, Judge Alex, Judge Karen, etc, etc. (no wonder crime rates are so high; all the fucking Judges are on TV!), I can just see an endless line of mouth-breathing morons running into courtrooms all over the country with similar reports offered by similar websites, submitting them as "evidence" of the "defendant's character". If aliens landed today, and if they formed a profile of mankind by monitoring our "Courtroom Shows" they'd come to the realization that about 75% of us couldn't find their own asses with both hands and a flashlight, and look like we were a genetic experiment gone horribly wrong. They'd probably come to the conclusion that no intelligent life was here, and just for good measure, they'd better destroy the planet before we pollute the galaxy. You have to ask yourself a few questions about this sort of thing: What standards are there? What are the criteria under which this information is handed out? What guarantees do you have the information is accurate? What happens if someone is injured by information on that report? Are such reports admissible in a court, or to deny employment, and under what criteria?

What happens if you're the victim of identity theft? What if this service actually helps a criminal to steal your identity?

I'm thinking of the day when someone is denied a job because of a 15 year old pot bust when they were 18. What happens when someone is wrongly put on a Sex Offender List because the information on those reports was abused by someone looking to get even with them? What happens when someone's marriage is destroyed by that information? Why should such information be so easy to get and be available to anyone without your permission in the first place?

Way back in the Dark Ages the Anglo-Saxon Kings of England commissioned a detailed study of their kingdom, to include all the people in it, their professions, their possessions and their holdings, right down to the last sheep and cooking pot. It was called the Domesday Book (Doomsday Book), and whenever the King needed to raise some taxes or take some land from one noble to give it to another, they consulted The Book. It was used to tax, and to punish. The King knew who could afford his new taxes and how much they could afford to pay, but he could also use the information in that book to take from one noble and to give to another, and thus, everyone had a reason to be very, very loyal to His Majesty.

Nowadays, thanks to the magic of computerized data collection and storage (the process is known as Data Warehousing), we have a much more extensive Domesday Book; not only is your financial life available to anyone willing to pay for the records, but now almost every aspect of your PERSONAL life is an open book to anyone who'll cough up the $49.95. Since we live in a culture in which there are no boundaries, and absolutely no common sense, let alone respect for others, we're probably all in for a lot of trouble from now on because someone has just made your life available to a legion of doofuses ranging from the "Simply Curious" to the "Criminally Insane" now can gain access to your personal info.

If I ever hear anyone complain about their "Right to Privacy" being violated again, I'll shoot them. You violate your own right to privacy (such as it is) every day when you fill in online surveys, surf the web, use a debit card or join the local gym. You were stamped and numbered the day you were born, and you've complied with every request for information from the time you registered to school to every job application you ever filled out. And someone's gone to the trouble of collecting that data; they've been collecting it for decades. Now, someone, even complete strangers, can pay for the privilege of violating what shreds of privacy you have left for a fee...and somehow this can be peddled to you as a virtue that can save your life.

It'll get worse when the government decides that it shouldn't have to pay for that information -- if it doesn't have most of it already -- (never put past your government to make a small fortune by selling the information it has about you to anyone who wants it) and simply starts issuing warrants or subpoenas for it. And you just know that some of them will be based upon the flimsiest of pretenses, but some brain-dead judge will allow it anyway.

One more Civil Liberty lost thanks to the confluence of technology, stupidity and complacency.

This country is soooo screwed.

Some People Deserve to Have Their Identities Stolen...

Okay, so I'm in the local Staples last night, helping my sister to buy a new monitor for her desktop. In the center of the computer department there is display station with all the new laptop and notebook models, all powered-up and connected to the internet, for prospective buyers to test out. I'm checking one out myself, when....

The Stupidest Woman in the World Walks In.

She, too, is browsing the laptops (hmm, perhaps I should think about a different term there) and trying a few out. She's young, perhaps no older than 25. She's rather pretty, but she has this vacant look upon her face reminiscent of cattle just before they get the stun gun to the back of the neck, the de rigeur cell phone glued to her ear. If I had to describe her looks and demeanor in precise detail, I would refer to her as the Prototype for the Sperm-Burping Barbie doll. She's chatting on her cell with another possibly-airheaded gum-snapping putana, and then, it happens...

Whatever the two were busily mewling about concerned Facebook. It was such an urgent matter that my pretty-little-cellphone-dingbat needed to sign on to Facebook this very goddamned second. It was a sense of urgency like I have only ever seen in firefighters and women in labor. So, she's about three feet away from me when the first indication of mental disease manifests: she actually has to ask Boyfriend --- He's an obvious Metrosexual with one of those new-fangled swoopy-do haircuts. We'll describe him as "Gelded-Hair-Gel Ken", and has been hovering at a safe distance of 30 feet or so, admiring the latest Bluetooth headsets --- what her own password is. This conversation takes place across two or three isles of merchandise, with approximately a dozen people within earshot. My shock at this seemingly-stupid-and-slightly-dangerous conversation could perhaps only be surpassed my surprise that they hadn't simply texted each other, like all the hip youngin's do these days.

Anywhoo, I now know this young lady's Fcaebook signon, and her password. And I wasn't even looking for them.

Whatever was such a glaring emergency that she needed someone to shout out her Facebook password in a crowded store must have been severely disappointing when she had finally gotten to it. Perhaps it was one of those "you had to be there..." sort of things that struck The Other End of That Phone Conversation as funny or important, but which didn't quite tickle her fancy, because she quickly lost interest in it. Perhaps that was just an indication of her natural attention span, maybe there were no Prada 4" stilletto heels involved, but who knows? In short order she tired of Facebook, she tired of her conversation , and decided that this was now a good time to check her bank balance...On a computer available to the general public...

Yes, the bank card came out. She needed to have it handy because she apparently doesn't know her account number, either. But there she was; typing those numbers into the computer-that-anyone-can-use-with-minimal-security-on-it, the card left flush on the countertop for easy viewing. Boyfriend returns, the two quickly discuss getting a Starbucks, and they begin to walk away...

But I stop them. And I show the young lady that whatever she's just typed into that Open-to-the-public laptop can be easily retrieved by someone with enough sense to avoid sticking his genitalia into a food processor. Does she thank me? Does she say "Oh, crap! That never occurred to me before!" No.

Instead, I'm admonished to mind my own fuckin' business. How dare I listen in on her conversations, and how dare I read over her shoulder...in a public place...where's she's shouting for passwords across several isles in a store...and placing her personal financial information on countertops and computers where it can easily be snatched by those with bad intent.

I hope she's up to her ass in credit card debt that she didn't incur by the end of the week. I seriously hope her reputation (if she has one beyond "has no gag reflex") is ruined within a month. I seriously hope her career (is "nail technician" even a career?) is destroyed because she's a moron. Because that is exactly what happens to people who don't defend themselves against identity theft.

People complain loudly about there being no privacy anymore, and then they won't even take simple steps, or advice, on how to protect what's left...Fuck 'em all, I say.

CIA Outpost Bombed, 7 Killed...

The bomber was apparently not searched...at all. This is in Afghanistan, no less. The CIA let a complete stranger walk into a 'secret base' and blow himself up. As JammieWearingFool points out in his post, though, at least one Administration official finally used the word terrorism. I guess that's some kind of progress.

But where have we heard of this sort of thing before? Starting to see a pattern develop vis-a-vis Muslim bombers and the Government's security mindset? If someone had searched Pantybomber, he would have been caught. If someone had searched this guy, he would have been caught.

Lesson: search Muslims, find bombs. But apparently our government hasn't figured this out yet. It probably needs another 18-month-long-and-horrednously-expensive "study" to confirm this.

Yet Another Argument Against Outsourcing...

Citbank hacked...again. By Russian Gangsters. I wonder if this is the same bunch that hacked Citi back in November or if the two incidents are one in the same? Of course, they could just be following a great tradition of stealing electronically from a bank which seems to have a history of it going back at least 3 years.

Obviously, no system is hacker-proof. No data completely secure, ever. The nature of computing is such that complete, airtight security will almost never be possible. You need only look to your own desktop PC to see this; you're constantly bombarded with viruses, trojan horses, hijackers, phishing programs and a host of worms that you must constantly defend against with your puny anti-virus software. Only some of these things are exploited by the stereotypical geeky introvert determined to prove his intelligence and superiority over classically-trained Computer Scientists.

The vast majority of these things are created by people with malicious intent. The biggest threat comes comes from disgruntled programmers, who after often spending thankless years slaving to create software for a global conglomerate are unceremoniously dumped onto the unemployment line, usually without warning, "when the project is complete". Of course, they posses the technical expertise to exploit the very software they've created (and they use the trapdoors, landmines and shortcuts they left in the code to facilitate testing, a common programming practice), and they usually do it to merely tarnish their former employer's image. It's a bit of petty revenge.

But then there are the true criminals.

Cybercrime is one of the fastest-growing categories of crime in history. As more and more of human existence and commerce has been distilled into a series of bits and pixels, the cyber criminal has been right there to snap up the bits and pixels that fall by the wayside. Like a pilot fish to a cyber shark.

Many of these criminals work for cartels, gangs, or syndicates, or whatever euphemism you'd like to use, and some of them are also former IT workers treated badly by the industry, or co-opted by the criminals. They have the expertise, the skill, to crack any system on the planet. Because they very often built the damn things in the first place.

Since most of these gangs are overseas, in places like Russia and China, they are very often beyond the reach of U.S. Authority, or even protected by corrupt government officials in those countries. Right now, the money they stole could be financing drug deals, terrorism, slavery, and even worse, and the people who are being stolen from will have no legal recourse against Citi, and little hope of either recovering their funds or of seeing justice served.

Of course, this state of affairs was made infinitely easier by Wall Street's (and other industries) insistence on doing everything 'better, faster, cheaper', to the point where corners are cut so finely, and so routinely, that no one ever thought about cybercrime when they granted access to their systems to an unseen, anonymous, third-party 'consultant' in Moscow, Beijing, Mumbai or Abu Dhabi. All that mattered was the price tag. It's almost a given in the industry that when someone says "we'll save X", it's done with very little thought...and on as small a budget as possible.

They even work cheap to get cheaper.

I'm not saying Citibank would have been invulnerable if it was still hiring Americans to run their systems. I'm only saying that they'd have a much better degree of control over their systems and their customer's data.

Unfortunately, it's going to take some massive catastrophe for Citi, and all the other banks and brokerages, to realize that their policies regarding IT costs is going to come back bite them on the ass, big time. Probably right after a major terrorist attack in which someone discovers that some bank's systems were used aid terrorists without the bank's knowledge, or that billions have been stolen from right under their noses (like when half-a-trillion bucks disappeared in 20 minutes right in front of the Federal Reserve's cyber cops just before the last Presidential election. You wonder why they don't talk much about that, huh?).

Imagine the lawsuits that would engender?

Wall Street doesn't learn from experience. It only learns from lawsuits.

And then people like me will be able to write our own paychecks because the company was run by a bunch of short-sighted cheapskates who don't truly understand the systems they supposedly run. Just like when they fired all the COBOL programmers and then suddenly needed them again to 'fix' the Y2K problem. They all came back as 'consultants' with six-figure fees.

Sometimes, cheap turns out to be the more expensive option.

Big Brother is Watching You...

One more for the "What the fuck is happening in the UK?" File.

This, from the Daily Express.

Appropriately, the man who advocates this policy is named Ed Balls. He is also the Minster for Children (why do children need a Government Ministry? Since when did they start paying taxes?). Tell me he doesn't have some deep-seated issues to work out from his childhood. Perhaps it's what's led to this.

Some highlights and commentary:

"Private security guards will also be sent round to carry out home checks, while parents will be given help to combat drug and alcohol addiction. Around 2,000 families have gone through these Family Intervention Projects so far..."

How about taking this approach with 2,000 convicted felons, drug-addicts or pedophiles? By the way, how many of those families have at least one 'honor killing" in their background int he last six months, or are only white, native-born Britons going to be watched?

"Ministers hope the move will reduce the number of youngsters who get drawn into crime because of their chaotic family lives, as portrayed in Channel 4 comedy drama Shameless. "

By this logic, George Bush wouldn't have gotten the Patriot Act if Jack Bauer hadn't had it first. Sure, all the really first-class countries dictate public policy based upon what they see on television...

"But Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling said: "This is all much too little, much too late."

I'll assume that "Shadow Minister" means "Conservative", and that somehow this poor person believes that putting people under active surveillance and sending goons 'round to check on them is "too little"? I think he/she has missed the point entirely. No wonder the Tories can't win elections.

"This Government has been in power for more than a decade during which time anti-social behaviour, family breakdown and problems like alcohol abuse and truancy have just got worse and worse."

And we're too stupid to notice the obvious correlation, being politicians, and all. That is the best advertisement for a Conservative government I've ever heard right there. Delivered from a Labourite's mouth, no less. If this does not become a standard article of Conservative party propaganda until the next election, someone should be fired...and then executed. I'll even help you: it's called YouTube.

"Mr Balls also said responsible parents who make sure their children behave in school will get new rights to complain about those who allow their children to disrupt lessons."

Excuse me while I pick my jaw up from the desk. Apparently, you haven't got the right to complain in England, especially on principle, when it concerns your children? But you may earn the right if you do what the government tells you to do? Is this guy for fuckin' real?

Don't be surprised if one of the nitwits on this side of the Atlantic recommends something similar, soon.

Cyberwar...
Article in today's New York Post about North Korea's Cyber nastiness this past week. Something clicked for me upon hearing more about this yesterday, bear with me.

I remember reading a report online this past October, just as John McCain was 'suspending his campaign to focus on the economy' that the economic issue's first manifestation was in the Federal Reserve 'losing' half a trillion dollars in cash in a twenty-minute period (I have tried, but I cannot find that post anywhere) on the day the markets first began to tank. That's $500 billion electronically transferred by someone, or several someones, someplace where the Federal Reserve was unable to follow it, or get it back. Someone suddenly drew on huge reserves of cash and took it clean out of the monetary system. The next day, the Fed was looking for $700 billion; 500 to cover the losses, 200 more as a cushion. (Disclaimer: I do not know for a fact that any of this is factually true, but it fits a theory based on what I know and see. I spent 20 years in data processing in the financial industry, so bear with me).

Now, the Fed is perfectly capable of tracing that money, or at least , it should be. So far as I know, it still has not explained where that money went. There could be two reasons for it:

a) They honestly don't know.
b) You really don't want to know.

Why wouldn't you really want to know? Because what if that cash was vaporized in a cyber attack? How safe would you feel your money was? Markets are all about security, if nothing else; people have to believe the system is secure and within reasonable limits, predictable. How secure and predictable is a system where someone could electronically siphon off half a trillion dollars with no one noticing or being able to stop it?

The timing of the debacle was suspect too. An October Surprise of epic proportions. Perhaps someone was giving G.W.B a final "fuck you!" on his way out the door, and at the same time ensuring that John McCain would be fatally wounded? When one considers the speed with which the Obama Administration, and the democratic party apparatchiks have shown in insinuating itself into American industry and finance, and destroying what's left of financial confidence from within the system, the more paranoid, tin-foil-hat-wearing conspiracy theorists begin to sound.

Just a hunch, but I gather we're not being told the entire truth behaind this economic crisis, because the truth is that this country was attacked, sans bombs and airplanes, electronically with a cyber assault on the financial system. I think the government knows it, and knows who did it -- but not how it was done -- and that this helps explain some of the recent chaos.

Or, I could be talking out of my ass. Until more facts are available, your guess is as good as mine.