Chronicling the depravities of the State.
Want to see something funny? If you answered yes then I have a clip for you (if you answered no then you have no sense of humor and I hate you). A couple of people walked around the recent Rally to Restore Sanity carrying a sign saying “Obama = Keynesian.” Hilarity ensues as people have no idea about economic theories make assumptions:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_23Nt5XumaU]
You know what’s almost adorable? Wanna be “l33t hax0rz.” These are the kids who have either just downloaded Cain and Able and think they’re hot shit or somebody who just found out what Wireshark is. Usually you can identify these punks by talking to them for five seconds… they’re the ones that will tell you how they can “hax0rz ur netwurkz.” Spotting them on IRC is made even easier because they’ll usually ask for your IP address so they can “hax ur azz.” Two things become apparent when talking to these people; they don’t know what the Hell they’re talking about and they can’t spell. I actually find the former more annoying than the latter to be honest.
Sometimes I find these people amusing enough to post about them. I’m sure you’ve deducted that this is one of those times. Via a good joke thread going around I found this little gem of an article about one of these “hax0rz.”. Although the information in this article is technically correct it’s shrouded in such a thick fog of bullshit I couldn’t help but laugh. The premise here is the author has decided to show how “l33t” he is by sneaking into an apartment building and listening to traffic on an open Wi-Fi network. I’m mostly going to be making fun of his delivery of information here. Shall we begin (yes I’ve been drinking beer and feel like being a total prick, why do you ask?):
Wearing pyjama pants and an ironic t-shirt, I headed towards a large apartment building near where I live. I choose it because a lot of students live there and I could easily blend in. That and I knew there would be lots of targets.
Yes camouflage is required to sneak into an apartment. When doing tactical entries into apartment complexes sometimes it’s just not convenient to wear your tactical entry vest. Usually when I’m on one of these black ops I disguise myself in a button-down shirt, pants, and a good pair of boots. You know what? I blend right the fuck in with everybody else who wears regular looking clothes. I’m such a bad ass.
I used to be a door to door salesman, so I know a few unique ways to get into a building, but I didn’t need them. As I walked up to the door, someone else was leaving. They held the door open for me and I was in. As soon as I entered, I noticed a video camera. What I planned to do would look weird on camera and I didn’t want security on my butt, so I was more careful from there onwards.
Wait… this guy used to be a door to door salesman and thus knows tricks to get into buildings? Personally I know a thing or two about getting into buildings as well. Of course I’m not a complete dumb ass and know the best way to gain entry into a building is to just wait for somebody to let you in. You’ll not Al Capone here used that “trick.” It’s pretty damned difficult to stand outside and act like you forgot your key.
How about that camera? I know being on a laptop sure looks suspicious this day and age. Every time I’m on my laptop in a public area I get hassled by all sorts of security personnel. Wait… scratch that, I never get hassled by security because nobody sees somebody on a laptop as weird this day an age. Well I take that back, they do if you act suspicious by trying to avoid cameras. That’s why the best trick when entering a building is to walk in like you own the place. Don’t give anybody watching any cameras a reason to be suspicious such as keeping your head low when you see a camera:
When I finally made it to my floor a camera greeted me. I ducked my head low and walked over to the staircase. If security was watching me, I didn’t want them knowing where I was.
Dumb ass.
After dropping down a few floors and switching to the other staircase I decided to do my dirty work on the 18th floor. The building was huge and it would take hours for them to search the entire thing. I opened up my laptop and lo and behold, there were eight insecure networks. I picked one at random and hit the mother-load.
Remember kids if you’re going to be an elite “hax0rz” you need to avoid cameras but then post exactly where you were in the building online. That way nobody can find out that the weird guy who entered or left floor 18 is the guy who wasn’t supposed to be there. Of course being an apartment I don’t think anybody gives two shits.
The program you see those IP’s in is called Ettercap. It’s no longer in development and I don’t want to go over everything it does, lets just say it makes it so I can steal usernames and passwords among other things. All I had to do was install the program and run it.
Ettercap is so elite and secret that “hax0rz” can’t talk about it.
I then opened a program called WireShark (you can see it in the second screenshot). Using this program I can easily see the websites these four people were browsing. As you can see this person is browsing IMDb. And in the next screenshot the person is… err…
OH MY GOD! WIRESHARK! IT’S SO FUCKING L33T! In fact it’s so fucking “l33t” that I use it almost every day at work. Wireshark is a packet analyzer. What the fuck is a packet analyzer you ask? Nothing fancy. It captures traffic going across a network and saves it for analysis. Wireshark has a million and one uses (for instance I use it to debug network applications I’m developing). Basically you can view all unencrypted data that goes across a network meaning if somebody on your network is using HTTPS you’re shit out of luck.
So I’m sure you’re asking why I wasted my time ridiculing this kid. The answer is simple… I’ve been drinking which means I’m a bigger asshole at the moment than usual (hard to believe isn’t it?). Additionally “hax0r” kiddies irritate me. They prey on peoples’ ignorance of computers to make themselves look more intelligent.
What the kid said in this article is technically correct. If can turn on my laptop, sniff an open wireless access point, and obtain any unencrypted traffic going across said network. I just don’t try to make myself look like a bad ass doing it. I also don’t do it on networks that I don’t own or have permission from the owner. The proper way to demonstrate this fact would have been to setup a private open network, generate traffic on it, and demonstrate the fact you can obtain the traffic from it via another computer by simply listening.
I always find it funny how the script kiddies (a person who doesn’t actually know about security flaws but instead utilizes automated tools and pretends they’re a bad ass) are the most boastful punks. Most people with actual knowledge of security issue will explain it to you in such a way that it doesn’t make it seem like they’re trying to be an elite bad ass operator. I’m sure this kid thought he was hot shit once he realized that you can actually see peoples’ network traffic via a packet analyzer.
Honestly I’d be embarrassed if I posted some drivel such as that article on my web site. Hell I’m almost embarrassed just linking to it. Let me redeem myself by recommending the awesome beer that inspired this post.
I guess that’s all I have to say about this “l33t hax0rz.” Just remember kids, always herp before you derp.
You know what’s cute? Fanboys of expensive equipment. These are the people who will spend an exorbitant amount of money on something and explain to you what it’s so much better than the cheap version you purchased. I’m sure we’re all a little guilty of that. Myself for instance run Mac computers which are more expensive than standard PC rigs. Personally I like OS X and the fact that it runs out of the box without any hassle to me so it’s worth it. Of course I can explain why I prefer it and find the additional cost worth it to me.
Today I’m going to talk to you about the other group of people who spend lots of money, the ones who buy marketing terms without knowing what they are. There have been a couple of threads over a MNGunTalk recently dealing with the AR-15. As with any thread dealing with AR-15 rifles you will have one or two fanboys/trolls pop in and explain how the only real AR-15 fit for battler is a Noveske, Spike Tactical, etc.
What I find hilarious is the reasons spouted by these super operators. This is where we get into marketing terms. Every company will give you a list of terms and exclaim them to be reasons why their product is superior to their competitor’s. Here is where the problem comes in, what the fuck do those terms mean? My favorite example is the debate between the Melonite finish on Springfield XDs and the Tenifer treating on Glocks.
A Glock fanboy will exclaim to you that the Tenifer treating is far superior to “cheap Czech rip off.” Of course anybody who’s researched to subject knows that Melonite is just another marketing name for Tenifer. They’re the same process by the same company.
AR-15 fanboys like to bring up all sorts of high-speed and low-drag terms. For instance they’ll talk about the tests that are done by the high end AR-15 manufacturers. Tests are great… so long as you know the tolerance for error. Making a perfect and flawless product is practically impossible, you will always have some form of defect. Due to this fact you must know the tolerance for error before you can consider any test legitimate. You also need to know the exact test performed and how it was performed. An example of this is manufacturers who do high pressure testing on their barrels. What exactly does this test entail? How high is the pressure? What does this test prove? All these must be answered before you can proclaim it as a reason to purchase one product over another.
Another classic example in the gun community are metal injection molded (MIM) parts in 1911s. Many operators will proclaim any gun containing MIM parts is automatically junk. Of course MIM parts are used in a great number of 1911s (almost any 1911 under $1,000) without issue. If you’re going to proclaim MIM parts junk you must know the rate of failure for MIM parts versus, say, forged parts. Most operators know that MIM parts are cheaper and therefore believe they are inferior without any other reasoning.
In the computer development field we have a game called buzzword bingo. Buzzwords are the marketing term for software. Companies will boast about how their software package uses an “open XML format for data storage in the cloud.” What this generally means is your data is stuck on one of their servers (“the cloud”) and what format it’s in is irrelevant. If you don’t continue to pay your monthly subscription fee you can’t get at your data and thus you’re locked into that vendor. The other thing is XML can be human readable… once in a great while. Open up a Microsoft Word XML file in a standard XML editor sometime and tell me if you can read anything contained within. You won’t. There will be an excessive number of tags and references to external document type definition (DTD) files (among external XML files, style sheets, etc.). It’s all a buzzword that ultimately means absolutely nothing for you, the customer.
Basically what I’m saying is don’t buy into marketing terms. If a company is trying to sell you a product and have a bunch of marketing speak thrown in as reasoning find out what that marketing speak means. Sure the bolt on that rifle may be made out of totallyawesomanium but if you don’t know what that alloy actually is you may be paying extra for the marketing term used by that company to describe 4150 steel.
It seems the President of Mexico is once again trying to tell us what to do:
Mexican President Felipe Calderon has told the BBC the US should do more to reduce the demand for drugs that is fuelling violence in Mexico.
You want us to do something to reduce the demand for drugs? Sure thing we’ll legalize it all and end the war on drugs. Much like Portugal we should see a drop in drug related violence once they’re legitimized. Of course that’s not acceptable:
Mr Calderon and his counterparts from Colombia and Costa Rica, Juan Manuel Santos and Laura Chinchilla, said legalisation of cannabis in California would send a contradictory message.
God damn it! We offer a solution and you spit on it. What the fuck are we supposed to do?
“It is confusing for our people to see that while we have lost lives and we invest vast resources in the drug war, in the consumer countries they promote proposals like the Californian referendum to legalise the production, the sale and the consumption of marijuana,” said Mr Santos.
I understand that potential freedom and liberty may be confusing to you as presidential equivalent of Columbia but trust me it works. You’d be surprised how popular the idea of liberty really is.
He reiterated his long-standing view that the problem of organised crime would remain as long as the US remained the biggest consumer of drugs in the world.
If it’s no longer criminals to grow, possess, and use the stuff then organized crime will no longer profit from it. Once organized crime no longer profits from it their power base will be knocked out and thus become much less of a problem. A similar thing happened when we ended prohibition in this country many decades ago. But no story about the troubles of Mexico would be complete without the mention of the Mexican gun canard:
Obama administration officials have acknowledged that the US shares responsibility for the drug violence, on account of the demand for illegal drugs and its inability to stop weapons flowing south.
I will give the BBC one thing though, they usually do a good job of covering both sides of a story:
However, US gun rights groups question whether the US is the source for the vast majority of the illegal guns turning up in Mexico.
The majority of guns confiscated by Mexico and submitted to the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) for tracing do originate in the US.
However, a large number of seized weapons are not sent for tracing.
There is your reason so many guns submitted for tracing are found to originate in the US, not many guns are being submitted. For instance there really is no point is submitting a fully automatic AK-47 to the US for tracing being finding such weapons for a reasonable price (as any such weapon made after 1968 1986 is illegal) is practically impossible.
EDIT 2010-10-27 21:05: Had the wrong date posted. It’s corrected now thanks to Jeff.
How cute the Brady Campaign is trying to be relevant again. This time Paul Helmke is saying the way to get women votes is to support gun control. Strangely enough I don’t know many women who support stronger gun control and I know more who are bleeding-heart liberals than not. Of course the Brady Campaign have no bias on the matter because they get their data from polls:
Similarly, a poll done of voters nationwide for the Brady Campaign by Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates, Inc. in the November 2008 election found that 83 percent of female voters supported “the passage of laws placing reasonable restrictions on guns” (something that 68 percent of male voters supported). Eighty six percent of women supported criminal background checks on all gun sales (79 percent of men supported this).
Women voters’ desires for tighter restrictions don’t stop there. Seventy three percent of women (and 63 percent of men) supported registration and licensing of gun owners. Seventy percent of women (60 percent of men) supported restrictions on military-style assault weapons). Sixty seven percent of women (63 percent of men) supported a waiting period of five days for handgun sales. And, 60 percent of women (46 percent of men) supported limiting the number of guns that can be bought at one time.
Yes I removed the link from the quote because it goes to the Brady Bunch’s website and I’m not giving them any traffic. If you want to think you can copy and paste it:
http://www.bradycampaign.org/media/press/view/1085
Let me see if I can find their bias here. Oh there it is, “Similarly, a poll done of voters nationwide for the Brady Campaign…” If you pay a polling company to do a poll they will get you the results you want. That’s just good business. They also play the fear card:
With more than 100,000 getting shot or killed by guns each year in this country, voters — particularly women voters — are looking for candidates who will work to reduce gun violence. Since the U.S. Supreme Court has made it clear that near-total gun bans are off the table, now is the time for candidates to propose and support common sense restrictions that make it harder for dangerous people to guns. This would be good policy — and good politics — particularly for those seeking to widen the “gender gap.”
Once again the link was removed because of my strict rule of not giving those fuckwits referrals. Here’s the link you can copy and past into your browser:
http://www.bradycampaign.org/facts/gunviolence
You’ll notice it’s under the subcategory /facts which is an oxymoron coming from gun control advocates as anybody who’s read this site for any length of time knows. Notice how the quote says, “With more than 100,000 getting shot or killed by guns each year…” That’s important because they are including accidents and suicides in their statistics.
I think politicians will find the quickest way to get voted out is by supporting gun control. I’m sure most of the politicians still remember what happened the last time they supported the Brady Campaign’s agenda.
Wow, I can’t even begin to count the number of anti-gun memes in this article. Let’s count them shall we?
First we have the title which brings up the “big scary evil gun lobby that kicks puppies:”
ATF’s oversight limited in face of gun lobby
See that? The ATF’s oversight is limited because of the puppy kicking “gun lobby.” Those irresponsible lobbyists! How dare they work to defend a right confirmed in the Constitution this country was founded on! Meme two is the fact that there is no central database of gun purchases:
The government is prohibited from putting gun ownership records into an easily accessible format, such as a searchable computer database.
Most anti-gunners will claim such a database wouldn’t count as registration but it most certainly does. Any system that has a list of firearms sold and who purchased them is a registration system by default. Meme three is the claim that the ATF hasn’t the resources to complete this mission:
The agency still has about the same number of agents it had nearly four decades ago: 2,500. The firearms bureau inspects only a fraction of the nation’s 60,000 retail gun dealers, taking as much as eight years between visits to stores. By law, the ATF cannot require dealers to conduct a physical inventory to determine whether any guns have been lost or stolen.
Oh no! Not only can the ATF not handle the workload they already have but many guns are purchased from private entities (bonus points to the story writer who didn’t directly say “gun show loophole:”
Depending on how well a dealer keeps records, a firearms trace can take hours or weeks. But one-third of all gun traces come from the records of out-of-business gun dealers. In those cases, there is no one to call.
I’m going to just pull over for a side note and bring up this quote:
“Katrina was a mess,” Houser said.
Damn right it was! Katrina was a classic example of gun confiscation. The National Guard actually went in to New Orleans and stole peoples’ means of self-defense. Shit like this is a classic example of why gun owners are afraid of any registration system, then the government knows where to go to confiscate firearms. Of course this article wasn’t talking about that fact when they quote somebody saying Katrina was a mess. Oh no:
Gun dealers all over the Gulf Coast region were driven out of business by the hurricane, and they sent their wet and mildewing records to Martinsburg. For months, paper files sat in the center’s parking lot, drying in the sun.
The Mexico meme made a guest appearance in this article as well:
The difficulties at the tracing center have slowed efforts to trace guns seized from crime scenes all over the country – as well as in Mexico, where most of the seized weapons come from U.S. gun dealers, according to congressional reports.
Traces are most useful within the first few days, but it took the ATF an average of about two weeks to complete traces of firearms recovered in Mexico between 2004 and 2008, according to a congressional report last year on the ATF’s efforts to combat arms trafficking to that country. In addition, the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General said the ATF doesn’t have enough Spanish-speaking personnel and has been slow in developing a tracing system in Spanish.
I wonder if the author was getting paid by the meme for this article. And yet again the author brings up the meddling gun lobby:
Meanwhile, the change requiring Senate confirmation for an ATF chief allowed the gun lobby to have a say on Capitol Hill about the agency’s leadership.
Yet another meme is the ATF doesn’t have the legal authority to fulfill its mission:
The ATF’s hands are often tied when it comes to regulating dealers, according to interviews with current and former agency officials, as well as thousands of pages of internal files obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests.
Yes those bastards have to follow the letter of the law! How horrible!
It’s impressive that the author was able to fit all that bullshit into one article. The only thing missing was a blurb about children.
The “unbiased” Washington Post has a survey posted on their website with the question being “Are gun stores responsible for crime?” Not only is this the question but some people actually are voting yes on it.
I’m completely flabbergasted as the idea that gun stores should be responsible for the actions of their customers. Although is cliche I’m going to use the classic car analogy. Should a car dealership be held responsible if one of their customers kills a kid while driving intoxicated? Almost nobody I know would answer yes to this but somehow some people feel the rules should be different for gun stores. What logic or sense is there in the idea of holding gun stores responsible?
In order for a gun store to sell a gun they must be a federally licensed dealer. Having a federal firearms license (FFL) is the de facto definition of being a gun store. When you hold an FFL there are certain restrictions and regulations put into place. First you must have every customer fill out an ATF Form 4473 which records the firearms sold, the firearm’s serial numbers, and the person information of the purchaser.
After this form is completed the FFL holder must call the FBI’s National Criminal Instant Background Check System (NICS) hot line and provide the information on the 4473 to the person on the other side of the line. With this information in hand the NICS is used to run a background check on the purchaser. There are three results possible from this; go, no-go, or delay. This means the FBI ultimately grants permission on all sales performed in gun shops.
Shouldn’t this be considered enough on behalf of the FFL holder? If you want to blame somebody else for the actions of a criminals why not blame the FBI? They ultimately approved the sale.
What I would like to hear is justification from somebody who thinks gun stores should be held accountable for the actions of their customers. This justification must also include reasoning why gun stores are special and should be treated differently than other stores (unless of course you believe all stores should be held accountable for what their customers do with items that have been purchased at the establishment).
Guns are the only things I’m aware of where people say sellers should be held accountable for the actions of purchasers. Every other thing on the planet is assumed to be an item of no conscious and the user is ultimately held responsible for any misuse. Hypocrisy pisses me off almost more than anything else.
After the three gun competition yesterday I’ve decided I need to child proof my M1A SOCOM 16. Why? Because unlike most intelligent creatures on the planet I apparently have not learned to associate burning and pain with not doing something.
Case in point, after the final rifle stage I did the stupid thing I often find myself doing, grabbing the rail attached to the barrel of my rifle. Unlike a hand guard attached rail, the barrel attached rail on the SOCOM 16 seems to exist only to move heat to an easily contactable surface so the user can burn their hand. As this is the 157th time I’ve made this mistake I think it’s about time that rail comes off and a standard hand guard goes on. Heck it’s not like I can really utilize that rail anyways as I’ve always been concerned anything I attached to it would be completely cooked after a few magazines.
I also think it’s high time to replace that fat front sight with something that doesn’t completely cover a 10 inch target at 100 yards.
Yet another piece of news I missed during my time in Texas has bubbled up to my attention. The Firearm Blog reports that CNBC did a hit piece of the Remington Model 700 series.
CNBC’s report claims the Remington Model 700 can fire without the trigger being pulled and that flaw has resulted in injuries and deaths. Of course as The Firearm Blog points out pre-1982 Model 700s were known to have that particular flaw (although if there were injuries and deaths involved I don’t know, just make it a point to not walk in front of any firearm and you can avoid that potential cause of injury/death). As the CNBC report mentions this flaw going back 60 years I believe they are digging up an old story, claiming it’s new, and ignoring the fact that the problem was fixed in 1982.
I also have to agree with a point made on The Firearm Blog. In this day and age there isn’t a single issue a firearm can have that won’t go across the entire Internet. Just look at the Ruger LCP when it came out, every issue on the planet was brought up on almost every firearm message board on the planet. The Remington Model 700 is incredibly popular with hunters, military, and police. If there was a major flaw in the gun it would be well known.
Of course CNBC isn’t exactly known for using facts and they’ve always had a major anti-gun slant as far back as I can remember. Hopefully this hit piece doesn’t cause too much trouble for Remington.
A story today is saying the United States Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood is pushing for a complete ban on cell phone usage while driving. This includes standard cell phone talking, texting, and the use of hand-free systems. He claims people are distracted by all of these things and it is leading to accidents.
Personally I’m always dubious of what politicians say so I’ve been looking into the matter. It’s pretty universally accepted that cell phone usage has been increasing exponentially for the last decade and a half. I’m not one to just take generally accepted ideas so I started digging for facts. CTIA has been keeping statistics on the number of cellular phone subscribers since 1985 [Waring: PDF]. Since 1985 the number of cell phone subscribers has went from 203,600 (which surprised me there were that many back in ’85) to 276,610,580 in 2009. In roughly two and a half decades we’ve literally went from hundreds of thousands of cell phone subscribers to hundreds of millions. I’d call that an exponential increase.
If Mr. LaHood’s claims are accurate and the ever increasing amount of distraction in automobiles are causing accidents there should be a noticeable increase in the number of accidents since 1985. This is where the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) comes into play (I sources them in my last post). In their 2008 report [Waring: PDF] page 14 lists the historical data of crashes by crash severity. The main thing I was concerned about was the total number of automobile accidents per year.
Like I said if cell phone usage has been causing automobile accidents it should be noted on the total number of accidents yearly. The data published by the NHTSA goes from 1988 to 2008 which is what we’ll concern ourselves with. So how much have automobile accidents increased? Here’s the funny thing, they haven’t. In fact the number of accidents has been on a slight downward trend since 1988.
In 1988 the total number of automobile accidents was 6,887,000, in 1990 it was 6,471,000, in 1995 it was 6,699,000, in 2000 it was 6,394,000, in 2005 it was 6,159,000, and finally in 2008 it was 5,811,000. It seems the only correlation that exists between the increase in cell phone subscribers and automobile accidents is a slight downward trend (which I’m absolutely not implying is causality).
Inevitably this is where somebody will point out the reason for the downward trend are laws banning cell phone usages while driving. The problem is that isn’t true. From what I’ve been able to find the first law banning cell phone usage while driving was enacted in New York in 2001. The downward trend in automobile accidents has been going on since the late ’80’s at the very least. If the downward trend was occurring before the first law banning cell phone usage while driving was enacted that indicate a third party reason. In fact a recent study confirms exactly what I’m saying.
Cell phone penetration seems to have no effect on the number of automobile accidents. I would wager that some people are just bad drivers. Cell phones don’t offer these people a distraction where there wasn’t one before, they just offer a different type of distraction. Before the popular use of cell phones how many times did you see somebody driving while applying makeup, brushing their teeth, shaving, reading, or some other such stupidity? Some people just want to be distracted and enacting laws barring the usage of cell phones while driving isn’t going to correct anything.
Please don’t read this and think I’m condoning texting while driving because I’m not. Texting while driving is just stupid and you must remove your eyes from the road. I just don’t think we need another law on the books to ban texting while driving, reckless driving laws already handle the problem. Especially considering the prevalent inclusion of GPS navigation systems on cell phones. What you might view as somebody reading an e-mail to texting could very well just be them reading a map and navigating. If you really want to remove all potential distractions from drivers you will have to ban GPS, radios, gauges (because looking at your heat gauge means you’re not look at the road), and passengers. Basically we all have to drive a single seat car with absolutely no accessories. Of course due to massive boredom we’ll probably have more people falling asleep at the wheel and thus increase the number of accidents.
I’m perfectly OK with the use of hands free system while driving as it’s no different than holding a conversation with your passenger and talking on your phone while driving without a hands-free system is dependent on the person doing it. Once again reckless driving laws already take care of the problem of bad and dangerous drivers.
The bottom line is I wish people would stop blaming cell phone usage for an increase in the number of accidents because there is no increase. Blame bad drivers for being bad drivers.