Dvorak News Blog

Blackwater’s high level role in US-Pakistan operations

By honeyman Monday November 23, 2009

Blackwater’s Secret War in Pakistan – The Nation — Good Lord. These clowns again. Why is Obama continuing to sanction their use and give them access to high level intelligence? What’s to stop Blackwater, or should I say Xe, following their own agenda?

At a covert forward operating base run by the US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) in the Pakistani port city of Karachi, members of an elite division of Blackwater are at the center of a secret program in which they plan targeted assassinations of suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives, “snatch and grabs” of high-value targets and other sensitive action inside and outside Pakistan, an investigation by The Nation has found. The Blackwater operatives also assist in gathering intelligence and help run a secret US military drone bombing campaign that runs parallel to the well-documented CIA predator strikes, according to a well-placed source within the US military intelligence apparatus.
[…]
One of the concerns raised by the military intelligence source is that some Blackwater personnel are being given rolling security clearances above their approved clearances. Using Alternative Compartmentalized Control Measures (ACCMs), he said, the Blackwater personnel are granted clearance to a Special Access Program, the bureaucratic term used to describe highly classified “black” operations. “With an ACCM, the security manager can grant access to you to be exposed to and operate within compartmentalized programs far above ‘secret’–even though you have no business doing so,” said the source. It allows Blackwater personnel that “do not have the requisite security clearance or do not hold a security clearance whatsoever to participate in classified operations by virtue of trust,” he added. “Think of it as an ultra-exclusive level above top secret. That’s exactly what it is: a circle of love.” Blackwater, therefore, has access to “all source” reports that are culled in part from JSOC units in the field. “That’s how a lot of things over the years have been conducted with contractors,” said the source. “We have contractors that regularly see things that top policy-makers don’t unless they ask.”

Wikipedia Losing Volunteers

By John C Dvorak Monday November 23, 2009

8 Comments

The Hadron collider works. We’re all still here! Bigger test coming.
AOL changes name and logo… It’s now Aol. Cripes!
AT&T does prepaid broadband .
Apple chewing up all the mobile broadband traffic.
Apple voids warranty on smokers who smoke around the computer. It’s supposedly a hazard to workers.
New USB wireless HDD.
Wikipedia losing volunteers.
MSFT or GOOG will buy Twitter they say.

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Cool Evian Roller Babies Ad

By hhopper Monday November 23, 2009

15 Comments

Swine Flu on Decline?

By McCullough Monday November 23, 2009

37 Comments

FRIDAY, Nov. 20 (HealthDay News) — Some areas of the United States are seeing declines in H1N1 swine flu activity, a federal health official said Friday, and while the disease remains widespread in 43 states, that’s down from the 46 states reported last week.

The H1N1 virus continues to hit young adults and children hard. During the past week, 21 more children died from the flu, bringing to 171 the total number of confirmed deaths among children. But, Schuchat cautioned, “This is just a partial counting. Those estimates showed that at least 22 million Americans have come down with the swine flu since the virus first surfaced in April, and approximately 3,900 people have died, including an estimated 540 children. Of the children who have died from swine flu, two-thirds had chronic health problems, such as asthma, cerebral palsy and muscular dystrophy, Schuchat said. The remaining one-third of the children were healthy and died of complications from bacterial infections, she said.

By way of comparison, seasonal flu — which poses a greater health threat to older adults — kills an estimated 36,000 Americans each year.

Meanwhile, the supply of H1N1 swine flu vaccine continues to grow, Schuchat said. As of Friday, 54.1 million doses had been produced by manufacturers — an additional 11 million doses since last week, she said.

Earlier, the CDC predicted there would be 190 million doses available by year’s end.

Better dump that stock…fast.

Climate Change Shock Ad…It’s Raining Bears! Hallelujah!

By McCullough Monday November 23, 2009

46 Comments

Unbelievable.

No Agenda on Global Warming Denialism

By John C Dvorak Monday November 23, 2009

30 Comments

This Episode’s Executive Producer: Laurence Roik
Associate Executive Producers: Matthew Kerry, John Stevens.

Direct link to show here.

Show Notes.

Direct link to Donation Page.

The Rolltop Computer That You Roll Up When Done

By Uncle Dave Monday November 23, 2009

21 Comments

We’re probably going to start seeing more creative designs as flexible displays and new technologies become available.

Orkin-Design

The device of the flexible display allows a new concept in notebook design growing out of the traditional bookformed laptop into unfurling and convolving portable computer.
By virtue of the OLED-Display technology and a multi touch screen the utility of a laptop computer with its weight of a mini-notebook and screen size of 13 inch easily transforms into the graphics tablet, which with its 17-inch flat screen can be also used as a primary monitor.

On top of everything else all computer utilities from power supply through the holding belt to an interactive pen are integrated in Rolltop. This is really an all-in-one gadget.

The Pray Your Fat Away Diet

By Uncle Dave Monday November 23, 2009

20 Comments

I wonder if a diet of only communion wafers and wine would do the trick.

There’s a new diet trend which claims dizzyingly high success rates, promises painless life-long commitment and allows dieters to eat anything they want.

Faith-based diets take the principles of Christianity and apply them to our overwhelming craving for chocolate, chips and cheese.

Advocates say dieters learn to fill the spiritual hole inside themselves with something more powerful than saturated fats.

The basic principle common to the U.S. programmes Christian Weigh Down and Thin Within (‘Helps you grow in faith while shrinking your waistline’), and the British equivalent Fit For Life Forever, is that dieters need to identify the deeper reasons why they over-eat, before they can hope to lose weight and keep it off permanently.

The trend began in America in the Eighties, but it’s finally taking hold here, with Christian weight-loss groups springing up, and dramatically increased sales of ‘spiritual dieting’ books such as What Would Jesus Eat?, Hallelujah Diet and The God Diet.

I Bought an ATM machine off Craigslist for $750 with 1000 credit card numbers inside.

By Eideard Monday November 23, 2009

14 Comments

After the Vegas DEFCON ATM debacle where hackers hacked hackers by setting up a fake ATM in front of the facilities security office, I needed to see how stupid easy it was to buy an ATM and just set it up anywhere. So my search began.

I started looking on e-bay and found plenty of new and used ATMs ranging from $500-2500 but quickly determined I didn’t want to pay $300 for shipping. Next was Craigslist…

I quickly found an ad from a bar north of Boston. They were selling pool tables, Budweiser neon signs and an ATM. I took my hacker with me and met Bob. Bob rented a room above the bar and was doing the deed for the owner. The bar was an old relic that was closing and liquidating its grungy assets. The ATM was sitting right next to the bar covered in 5 years of beer. Thank heavens they were smart enough to cover the keypad in clear plastic…

Needless to say I wanted to unbolt this thing as quickly as possible, get out of there and douse myself head to toe in pure alcohol hand sanitizer. After my hacker played with the manual, got it working and determined it was worth the financial risk, we loaded it on my trailer, paid $750 (down from a grand) and brought it home and put it in my garage.

My hacker comes over to my garage, manual in hand, all giggly, like hackers sometimes do and says “Watch this”. He punches the master codes to access the machines data on a device called an eprom and hundreds of credit and debit card numbers just start falling all over the floor…

RTFA. This could make you never want to use an ATM ever again. And stay out of sleazy bars.

Caption This Photo

By Uncle Dave Monday November 23, 2009

45 Comments

Man attacked and badly injured rescuing dog from killer kangaroo

By honeyman Monday November 23, 2009

15 Comments

All in a day’s work, mate

Man injured in roo attack – The Age — It’s about time I posted something gratuitously Aussie.
UPDATED
DOUBLE UPDATED

A man has been taken to hospital with deep cuts to his abdomen and face after being attacked by a kangaroo north of Melbourne.

The kangaroo had been holding the man’s dog down in a dam at Arthurs Creek when it lashed out.

Advanced life support paramedics were called to the property at 9.35am.

‘The 49-year-old dived into the dam and managed to free his dog but he was injured in the process,” paramedic Michael Vosbergen said.

“He suffered a deep cut across his abdomen, a deep cut across his face and eye and a number of scratches to his chest, face and arms.”

The man was given pain relief before being taken to the Austin Hospital in a stable condition.

Asylum seekers riot at Australian offshore detention centre

By honeyman Monday November 23, 2009

9 Comments

Asylum seekers riot in Australia – Al Jazeera — The Labor government here is in a bit of a pickle after largely dismantling the hard line refugee policies of the previous conservative Howard government and now seeing a large increase in refugee numbers. Christmas Island is a detention centre favoured by the current government as a site for holding and processing refugees caught on boats in the region. It is 2600 miles north west of Perth.

In the Christmas Island riots on Saturday, about 150 detainees are believed to have used billiard cues, tree branches and broom handles in brawls that left 37 people requiring medical treatment, including some guards trying to break up the fighting.

Australian police and the immigration department are investigating the incident, but Chris Evans, the Australian immigration minister, rejected suggestions the brawl was caused by tensions arising from overcrowding.

Evans, who said those believed to have been behind the brawl had been placed in “stronger” detention, played down the incident and blamed anxiety caused by the repatriation of some Sri Lankans for the violence.

“We’ve had some people removed back to Sri Lanka found not be refugees,” he told ABC Radio on Monday.

“Essentially we’ve had a fight between some detainees which got out of hand.”

The rioting comes as Australia is seeing the biggest stream of asylum seekers in seven years, a surge the government blames on the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as the end of Sri Lanka’s decades-long civil war.

Microsoft Overtly Trying to Screw Google and YOU!

By John C Dvorak Sunday November 22, 2009

29 Comments

Bing Tries To Buy The News – washingtonpost.com — Read this whole article. It’s disgusting.

Murdoch keeps threatening to stop letting Google index the WSJ.com and his other media sites, and wants other news sites to join him in this self-imposed silence. The folks at Microsoft’s Bing think this is a great idea. Not only that, but the FT reports that Microsoft is in fact in discussions with News Corp. and other publishers about the possibility of paying them to remove their sites from Google’s search index. This report comes on the heels of a meeting in Europe where Bing dangled the prospect of premium spots in search results to publishers and outright money for search R&D.

Born with half a brain, woman living full life

By Jacob Galt Sunday November 22, 2009

20 Comments

Born with only half a brain, Mack can speak normally, graduated from high school and has an uncanny knack for dates. At 27, doctors determined that the right side of her brain had essentially rewired itself to make up for function that was likely lost during a pre-birth stroke. But her childhood and young adult years were fraught with frustration.

“We were surprised to see the extent of the lesion in her brain, which basically took away the left side of her brain,” said Grafman. “There’s some very deep structures remaining, but the surface of her brain, the cortex is 95 percent gone and some of the deeper structures, structures that control movement, are missing. These are all structures that are important for movement, behavior, cognition.”

The only answer, Grafman said, was that Mack’s brain has rewired itself. The remaining half took over some of the essential functions that are normally done by the left, such as speaking and reading. That rewiring, however, came at a cost.

How 16 ships create as much pollution as all the cars in the world

By Jacob Galt Sunday November 22, 2009

39 Comments

As ships get bigger, the pollution is getting worse. The most staggering statistic of all is that just 16 of the world’s largest ships can produce as much lung-clogging sulphur pollution as all the world’s cars.

Smoke and sulphur are not the only threats from ships’ funnels. Every year they are also belching out almost one billion tons of carbon dioxide. Ships are as big a contributor to global warming as aircraft – but have had much less attention from environmentalists.

Both international shipping and aviation are exempt from the Kyoto Protocol rules on cutting carbon emissions. But green pressure is having its effect on airlines. Ahead of next month’s Copenhagen climate talks, airlines have promised to cut emissions by 50 per cent by 2050.