It looks like we put all our eggs in one basket, then dropped the basket

Unless you spent the entire weekend with mom slugging down mimosas in honor of her day, you'll probably know there's a nasty ransomware virus going around, infecting hundreds of thousands of computers worldwide that use the Microsoft Windows operating system.  Specifically, 200,000 computers in 150 countries have been hit so far, with the cyber-attackers demanding a $300 extortion to be paid in Bitcoins.  The UK's National Health Service, the German railway system, Chinese universities, many international businesses and others have all had their files locked up.

It seems that our NSA nerds found a flaw in the Windows system and utilized it to [CENSORED].  Unfortunately their secret got out and hackers developed it into this "Wannacry" virus, and now here we are all over the internet with our pants down around out ankles looking foolish.

Bad as this is, this is chump change compared to what might have happened.  What if they had hacked in and just hit the DELETE button?  What if all that info just permanently disappeared?  It could take months or even years to reconstruct it all, if that's even possible.  

As I've written about in the past, this is the new face of warfare.   No hostile military power is likely to roll 10,000 tanks across the border and invade the US or Germany or any other developed western nation.  There's no need to if they can just worm their way into our computer systems and knock out our stock exchanges, our medical centers, our research centers, etc.  They can bring us to our knees without firing a shot.

I know we have an army of cyber-security experts working to prevent this, but they will always be at a disadvantage.  Those on offense...in this case the cyber-attackers...know what they're going to hit, and when, and where, and exactly how.  Those on defense...our cyber-security experts...have to try and cover all bases all the time.  IF they can even identify all the bases.

This is the new normal.  We are hopelessly addicted to computers.  They control everything.  And with 90% of the world's computers running on the (apparently) super-vulnerable Microsoft Windows operating system, I have to wonder why we haven't kicked Microsoft to the curb years ago?  M/S seems to work 24/7 just developing new patches to fix their old patches.  DOH!  Isn't there anything safer/better?

Bottom line....there will always be hackers, and they will often win.  We will be increasingly inconvenienced, and likely even crippled now and then.  Count on it.  Individually, all I can think to do is hoard cash, for when our bank accounts and ATM's and such are zapped, cash will always be king.  I have no idea how businesses and other major institutions will defend themselves.  That's way above my pay grade.

S

The Big One-Oh-Oh-Oh!

To the applause of a few and probably the dismay of even more, this is my 1,000th post here on Blogger. 

I hope that I haven't offended many of you (unless you're a crooked Ivory Tower banker or a thieving politician).  I enjoy writing, even though my chosen subject matter is usually off everyone else's radar.  I have strong opinions on some things and, while I'm not necessarily trying to change any one's mind, I do hope you'll at least consider my positions and perhaps see things from a perspective you hadn't before.

The last time I looked 198,883 pageviewers had done just that.  Many agreed with what I wrote and many didn't, but those who didn't disagreed politely.  I like that.  Thank you for reading my drivel.

I'd also like to give a big shout out to the NSA....hey guys!  SUP?   Any good gossip you can share?  Brad and Angelina doin' OK?  Ted Cruz still doing vile things to farm animals?  NOOOO!  Pictures??

Thanks again everyone.  Party on!  (Sorry, but it's a cash bar.  Retirement income doesn't go as far as it used to, you know.  :)

S

You live by technology, you die by technology

Technology really kicked my ass yesterday.  My business email just vanished.  Pffffft!  I can't access my business website, and my email can't forward (link?) over to my personal email account.  I used to log in to my personal Yahoo account, then I could skip back and forth between the two emails....been doing it that way for years.

And I use my biz email as my "paper trail".  I have thousands of emails saved, available to refer back to if needed.  Where'd they go?  

K says they're on a cloud somewhere, but I have no idea which one.  So what am I supposed to do?  Call Google, Yahoo, Apple, Amazon, the NSA, etc and ask 'em if they have my stuff?  And if they do, I'm sure they're gonna want a password.  

"Sure, here's 50....let's try 'em all and see if one of them works."  I'll be "locked out" after the first 3 and have the FBI after me for suspicion of hacking.  DUH!

And on a non-technology matter, even dinner kicked my ass, too.  The little jingle on TV said, "Any footlong Subway sandwich....$5 all month long."  So I went to get K and me a footlong Chicken Bacon Ranch Melt for dinner last night.  They made it, toasted it, put on my toppings, wrapped it up, and then said, "That will be $7.75."  

"Umm....what happened to $5?"

She pointed to the small print on the bottom of the menu 15 feet up in the air, 30 feet behind the counter.  It said, "Any footlong except the Chicken Bacon Ranch Melt".  Those bastards!

Then back home I pulled up my ATT Uverse app on my iPad to check the TV schedule and it said I had no favorites saved.  Bullshit!  

It wants me to look through 800 channels just to find the 10 or so I actually watch?  I've been looking at it every evening for months.  I know I have them saved.  Where'd they go?  

Then I tried to log out and then back in, and it said it couldn't find the server.  It...couldn't...find...the...server?  How do you lose an entire $%^& server?  Aren't they the size of a refrigerator?

Is there some weird sunspot activity going on?  I mean, why me?  Why couldn't it smite Iran or North Korea or Cleveland?

*sigh*

S

Sad news

An 82-year-old local gentleman suffering from dementia who has been missing since October 11th has been found by hunters deceased in his vehicle 165 miles west of Dallas.  He left home to go to David's Meats (my butcher) and was never seen again.  No foul play was ever suspected.  A "Silver Alert" was promptly issued statewide without success.

While I didn't know him, I knew his son....he went to school with my brother....and his wife worked for my CPA.  Both were wonderful people.  It's hard to imagine someone wandering off and dying like that all alone, probably cold and hungry.

He was "old school" and didn't have a cell phone which might have been used to locate him. Likewise he had a GM SUV, but wasn't a subscriber to their Onstar service, which could have also been used to track him.  I wonder why the family couldn't have agreed to immediately begin service, allowing Onstar to flip an activation switch and then find him?  It obviously doesn't work like that, but it should.

How come we have drones flying at 30,000 feet that can identify a particular terrorist among thousands of other people, our NSA can identify a particular phone conversation anywhere in the world, there are cameras on every corner that can be pulled up to review every crime scene, and yet we can't find a missing person cruising aimlessly down a state highway in North Texas?

I guess the thing to take away from this is every elderly person should have at least a cell phone with them at all times so they can call for help, or in reverse help can find them.

S

I've got all the answers. It's the questions that trip me up.

So now leaked information has come out that says the NSA has paid $278M to media companies (Google? Yahoo? etc) for access to their customer's data.  What a waste!  They could have just come straight to me in the first place and for a whole lot less than that I would have "cc'd" them on all my emails from the get-go.  We could have cut out the middle men and saved the taxpayers a bundle.

I don't quite understand what's fixing to happen in Syria.  With the aid of maybe France....the Germans and Brits have opted out....the US stands ready to strike Syria in retaliation for their use of chemical weapons.

We've announced probable targets are their Ministry of Defense building, their Secret Police HQ, their Republican Guard barracks, certain military warehouses, etc, ALL OF WHICH ARE BY NOW UNDOUBTEDLY EMPTY.  And we've said we have no desire to target Bashar Assad personally....we're not looking for "regime change".  And we have no idea how to measure whether or not we're successful.

Yeah boy, that's a well thought out plan.  Can't we just hit a few keystrokes and cyber-fry all their computers and be done with this?  Yes, I know....they can retaliate and maybe fry ours, too.  Feces occurs.  I'll chance it.  (Which just reinforces my case for good 'ol yellow pads and #2 pencils.  :)

IMO we should either kick the ever-lovin' shit out of them or stay home and let's watch football.  And since cruise missiles cost more than we have left in petty cash, I say "pass the nachos".

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I hereby declare the long Labor Day weekend begins the second I click "Publish".  (The boss won't mind.  Go ahead and mention my name.)

Y'all have fun and stay safe.  ;)

S

"Hi, I'm from the government, and I'm here to help you."

K seems to think that because I've blogged on the public broadband that our leaders are crooks and their underlings are overpaid, lazy bureaucrats with BO I probably have a sizable dossier somewhere in the NSA archives.

Gee....I hope they spelled my name right.  *That's SCOTT, with two "T"s*

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Would you buy a used car from this man?

It seems the Junior Embarrassment from my home state of Texas, US Senator Rafael Edward (Ted) Cruz, has renounced half of his dual citizenship (born in Canada to an American mother and a Cuban father).  Rumors are this was done in order to pave the way for a 2016 run for the Presidency.  Of the United States of America.  Yes, I know!

I guess Canada's loss is....well....Canada's gain, too.

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Just got the news....we're moving again.  A nicer, larger apartment with a balcony/view here in our building has opened up, and we were first in line.

One question:  Does anyone have any experience with AT&T U-Verse internet/cable TV?  We have Time Warner now, but with their ongoing fight with CBS, and with football season rapidly approaching, I'm thinking this might be the time to tell TW adios.  (You don't mess with a man's telecast football games!)

Good day everyone.  :)

S

Mid-week Miscellany

OK....maybe I'm reading too much into this, but....

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They really should assign different colored packaging for products meant for different body parts.  Just sayin'.

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You know you're having a bad day when you come home from work to find your house looking like this:

It seems the City of Foat Wuth, TX hired a contractor to demolish a home down the street that had been condemned.  The one that should have been demolished was at 9708 Watercress.  The one that was demolished was at 9716 Watercress.  Maybe they should have given the guy driving the bulldozer a literacy test?

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Well, that's one way to chip away at the budget deficit.

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All is going well with foreign language (French) study.  Just as with English, conjugating verbs is a pain in the arse.  The idea of the "total immersion" method where you don't study all that noun/verb stuff but just dive in and learn by speaking is sounding pretty good, but I looked into the Rosetta Stone program and found it had a lot of dissatisfied customers.  Any other options?

Just thinking....if I were to move to France or Italy or Germany, etc, and spoke English, wouldn't I then be speaking a "foreign language"?  Ta Da!

S

Is it Apple or Ipple?

I see that Apple is announcing a new upgrade to it's operating system, iOS7.  I know geeks everywhere are in a near orgasmic state over this news, but the Perpetual Neanderthal (me) is not impressed.  I'm just getting used to how my Apple devices work (yeah, I'm  a slow learner) and now they're gonna change them?  *sigh*  As long as they don't mess with its intuitiveness I'll be OK.

Question of the day:  Why does Apple call all their stuff "i"?  It's Apple, not Ipple.

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The scandal around the NSA contractor who revealed the gubment was doing across-the-board phone and internet surveillance on us keeps growing.  I must admit I'm pretty conflicted about it.  On the one hand I want the Federales to keep a close eye on potential terrorists living among us, but it seems to me they're casting much too broad a dragnet.

Did you know there are over 800,000 civilians (contractors) who have the top-secret clearance to see this sort of stuff?  This fella Snowden said he had it within his scope of authority to listen in or read anyone's email.  This is the exact opposite what gubment officials are telling us. 

Think about it.  Do you really believe none of the 800,000 snoops on the payroll wouldn't be even a little tempted to listen in to an old girlfriend's conversation, or what was being emailed back and forth between Brad and Angelina?  I can't imagine 800,000 people, or even 800 people, who would be that disciplined.

I'm afraid I have to agree with those who say our government has overstepped propriety.  I say there needs to be at least some connection between a possible national security threat and invasive snooping.

Opposing views welcome.

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This reminds me of a story a friend told me from back in his days as a marketing rep for a company that sold high-end communications equipment, the kind used on government aircraft for secure communications.  

He was in Bulgaria (?) to bid on a system for their executive aircraft.  He called HQ one evening from his hotel room to let them know how negotiations were going.  He commented, "I really don't think we have a chance.  These guys have close ties with other former eastern European allies and will probably choose one of their companies."

The next day at breakfast a Bulgarian negotiator stepped up to my friend and very stiffly announced, "I want you to know that you do have a fair chance to get this contract, and that we will not necessarily choose a company from one of our former eastern European allies."

Haha!  Busted!

S