Category Archives: Technology

Cyber Wars

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The Cyber wars have esculated up one more notch with the discovery that our Predator and Reaper drone fleet has been infected with keylogger virus.

The virus, first detected nearly two weeks ago by the military’s Host-Based Security System, has not prevented pilots at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada from flying their missions overseas. Nor have there been any confirmed incidents of classified information being lost or sent to an outside source. But the virus has resisted multiple efforts to remove it from Creech’s computers, network security specialists say. And the infection underscores the ongoing security risks in what has become the U.S. military’s most important weapons system.

“We keep wiping it off, and it keeps coming back,” says a source familiar with the network infection, one of three that told Danger Room about the virus. “We think it’s benign. But we just don’t know.”

So far no one knows who is harvesting this information and how damaging the leak is. It looks like we have entered a new era of warfare that includes virii and trojans.

 

Thoughts on Google Plus

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Sometime at around the beginning of July, Google presented their new social network that they called Google+ .  to a limited group of Beta testers. They have controlled the growth of their new network by making the site by invitation only, and at times throttling the the rate that the invitees could join.  this is pretty much the same system that has been used since Google introduced Gmail.  While the Google plus is still by invite only, Invites are pretty easy to come by.  Anyone reading this can get one here. Existing users received 150 invites. At any rate Invites aren’t so scarce and Google doesn’t seem to be throttling back anymore. Continue reading →

The Falling of a Giant

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Motorola. a once powerful company that at one time was a major consumer products company, an respected innovator, a communications giant, a major high tech chip manufacturer, and a supplier of some of the best cell phones on the plane. The once great Motorola took steps today to become a pretty good walky-talky supplier.

Burning CDs

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Like most people I have a CD/DVD burner on my computer.  I also have a stack of CDRs. I don’t believe many of use  CDs much anymore. We buy our computers with most of the software need already installed, and almost any other software or software upgrades we need can be bought or downloaded on line.  One thing that we do use our CD/DVD readers for is watching and listen to store bought disks. Other wise the CD/DVD burner is heading down the same path as floppy disks.  CDs wont work on the newest tablets Chrome, or Netbooks. Although on they are still standard equipment on Desktops Laptops and even servers, One might wonder if we will start to see these no longer supplied as standard.

I spend as lot of time behind the wheel, often through areas that have poor radio coverage. I could always use an MP3 player, but its not something I normally use. Pluging my phone in and listening to Google Music on my Android would be a good solution if I was always in range of a good 3G/4G  signal.  Most cars still come with MP3 players,

I burn MP3 CDs.  You can hold a lot of music on a CD. It normally works out to about 1 meg a minute.   One can get about 10 hour plus. on a CD without hearing the same song twice.   2 or 3 CDs in the Dash or console is enough music to get me anywhere in the country with some pretty great music No thumb drives, no MP3 players and no Apple I-tunes required.

Miro has proven to big resource in gathering music that is scattered all lover a computer and other local machines on a network. Miro will gather and aggregate your music and video media,  its a good player as well.  It takes some getting used  and learning It Works for most systems

Google Music is a nice way to listen to music on a phone while in the the civilized world. Make sure you download Google Music Manager though.  This is the program that searches and syncs music from your computer to the clouds.

Pandora is pretty nice, but I’m finding myself using it less and less.  MP3 cds play on my BlueRay players also.

Linux “abcde” is a linux command line driven program that kicks butt ripping CDs, There are good free rippers for any O/S.

Please feel free to to comment on your music solutions. I am interested in with how you pack and take your music with you.

Google Plus; Pulling Out The Floodgates

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Google Plus isn’t such an exlcusive club any more.  They have given users 150 Invites to hand over, and a link so people can click on it and get taken directly to the G+ signup pages.  If you would like to find out what G+ is all about, Your Invite is HERE!

Enjoy !

 

Even More Extremism

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As the Senate debates and hashes out a workable budget and solution to the approaching deficit cap. The radicals have opportunity to to impose their brand of right wing extremism on the rest of the country;

“The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. government can’t pay its
own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our government’s reckless fiscal policies. …  Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally.
Leadership means that ‘the buck stops here.’ Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.”

Author: Senator Barack Obama

March 20, 2006, prior to voting against a debt ceiling increase in the U.S. Senate.

This is the one speech he has made that was right then and is even more true today. It’s just a shame he won’t take the same stand today.

Obama’s Revenge

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Obama’s one contribution to reducing the size of government begins today with the completion of the last  Shuttle Mission. Obama doesn’t like us here in Texas, We are the land of bitter church going gun clingers. We as a state provide 2 recent somewhat conservative presidents and the districts surrounding the Houston NASA facilities sent Tom Delay and Ron Paul to represent us.

Today ends America’s manned space program.  Huge layoffs that will mark the beginning of a decline in the League City/Clear Lake area as the area joins the rest of the nation in the great Obamian recession.

Cyber War: Social Sites

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Google Plus IconsThere is a lot at stake with Google’s beta release of Google +. The reports and reviews so far are glowing and the select few that have access all seem excited about the new product.  For the first time Facebook may be dealing with competition from a superior product.

There is a Chrome Facebook Friend Exporter plugin that Facebook has blocked. There is a lot at stake and niether side is expected to play nice. Google is poised to steal away a sizable portion of Facebook’s clients and if successful they may destroy Facebook.

Facebook is actively trying to block Facebook Friend Exporter, a Google Chrome extension that lets you export the list and contact info of your Facebook friends for use in other services, the extension developer Mohamed Mansour claims.

“Facebook is trying so hard to not allow you to export your friends. They started to remove emails of your friends from your profile by today July 5th 2011. (The extension) will no longer work for many people,” Mansour wrote on the extension’s homepage.

The Facebook Friend Exporter is a simple tool that lets you grab phone numbers, e-mails and other data from your Facebook friends, and directly import them into Google Contacts. The current version doesn’t work anymore, but the author promises to build and maintain new version that uses a different design.

Facebook clients seem to ready to bolt, and American subscribers were  already showing signs of boredom with the product.

Congressman Fred Upton is a Damn Liar

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Republican, Fred Upton promised when he was begging and bidding for  a shot at a chairmanship  of the Energy and Commerce Committee. That he would move to get rid of the incandescent light bulb ban. He got his Chairmanship and there is no sign of any bill. The ban is based on the lie and fraud of global warming and is contrary to free market.  There should be absolutely no room for a Republican that is anti-free market.

Late last year, Republican Congressman Fred Upton, who co-sponsored the infamous ban on the current generation of inexpensive incandescent light bulbs included in the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act, was desperate to secure conservative support for his bid to become Chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, the same committee in which he had introduced the despised ban three years earlier. He therefore promised that one of his first acts would be to advance legislation that would repeal the very light bulb ban he had once championed.

Upton’s ploy succeeded, and in January of this year, Speaker of the House John Boehner named Upton to his treasured chairmanship. More than four months later, Upton has not held the promised hearings. Several dozen members of the House, including Joe Barton, Michele Bachmann, and Thad McCotter, have co-sponsored legislation to repeal the ban, so there’s plenty of support for it among true conservatives. And since the ban on the current generation of 100 watt incandescent bulbs is scheduled to go into effect on January 1, 2012, prompt action is required. There are only six and a half months left!

Journalist Virginia Postrel recently wrote that the Republican leadership in the House has no intention of actually repealing the incandescent light bulb ban, and I’m inclined to agree. It’s a different matter in the Senate, where the Republicans are in the minority. The Senate held hearings back in March, but despite a few rumors to the contrary, there’s no indication that the House, where Congressman Upton controls the path, will hold hearings.

Government moves to destroy established industry, in favor of a more politically correct yet toxic technology. The consumer is left with fewer choices. Atlas Shrugged.

 

Money in a Hole

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Exxon-Mobile had a good day.  Matt Bramanti said it well in a tweet.

@mattbramantiMatt Bramanti
You know what’s cool? Finding $70 billion in a hole.http://goo.gl/RN258

A huge find in the Gulf, although disappointing to President Obama, who disains success to to American people and Industry. It is good news for those of us who are tired of Muslim and Venezuelan blackmail, and high fuel prices.

Exxon Mobil Corp. has made one of the largest oil and gas finds in the Gulf of Mexico in a decade, the company announced today.

The oil major said it made two oil discoveries and a natural gas discovery in its Keathley Canyon blocks, including an oil discovery in the company’s first exploration well since last year’s moratorium on deep-water drilling.

Exxon expects the combined finds to yield more than 700 million barrels of oil equivalent. More than 85 percent would be oil, the company said.

Drilling early in 2010 turned up oil and natural gas at the well 250 miles southwest of New Orleans in the Hadrian North field. Work was suspended during the federal drilling ban, but the well is in about 7,000 feet of water and will be drilled deeper, the company said.

Meanwhile the CEO of Government motors, wants us to pay more for fuels, presumably so that we might be forced to buy their crappy Volt.

If General Motors CEO Dan Akerson had anything to say about it, you would be paying a dollar more a gallon for gas. Yes, with $4/gallon prices hitting consumers in a tough economy, Akerson told the Detroit News: “You know what I’d rather have them do — this will make my Republican friends puke — as gas is going to go down here now, we ought to just slap a 50-cent or a dollar tax on a gallon of gas.”