So where was that Terry McAuliffe “Mandate” the Centerist NeoLiberal Third Way Blue Dog DLC DNC Villager 1%ers were promising?

Oh, it was an Invisible Inflation Confidence Fairy.

By every objective measure these people are failures.  Non-performers unable to deliver the results they promise.

Liars and Confidence Men.  Thieves and Grifters.

And they think you mere marks and rubes.  You gonna take that?

Evidently not.  Otherwise it would actually have been a mandate.

Organlegging is the name of a fictional crime in the Known Space universe created by Larry Niven. It is the illicit trade of black market human organs for transplant. The term organlegging is a portmanteau combining the words “organ” and “bootlegging”, literally the piracy and smuggling of organs.

The crime developed as a response to the Organ Bank Problem, a concept featured prominently in the early Known Space stories, particularly those set in the 21st and 22nd century.

…

In Niven’s universe, it was possible to transplant nearly any organ in the body (and prevent rejection) by the mid 21st century. Since any organ could now be replaced, in theory one could use the organ banks to extend life indefinitely. To maintain communal organ banks, one needs donors (i.e. dead people). When the death rate is reduced (via the organ banks), the number of donors decreases. Thus, the supply of organs would continually reduce.

Compounding this problem, the high success rate of organ transplants tended to discourage research into other viable medical treatments. As a result, medical research was stagnated to a large extent, focusing primarily on improving transplants and little else. Repairing a failing organ (which could presumably fail again later) was considered secondary to the “complete” solution of replacing the failing organ.

An example in the Known Space universe was that anyone who wore eyeglasses was considered a reasonable candidate for an eye transplant (one or both); whereas in the real world, today’s nearsighted population can solve the problem (temporarily) by wearing corrective lenses or (more permanently) by undergoing laser surgery.

On Earth, the problem led to a repressive society almost unrecognizable by today’s standards. Since the average citizens wished to extend their lives, the world government sought to increase the supply by using condemned criminals to supply the organ banks. When this failed to meet the demand, citizens would vote for the death penalty for more and more trivial crimes. First violent crimes, then theft, tax evasion, false advertising, and even traffic violations became punishable by the organ banks. This failed to solve the problem, as once the death penalty was passed for a crime, people stopped committing it. This resulted in nearly every crime meriting the death penalty. Further attempts to alleviate the problem by declaring certain groups of cryogenically frozen people to be dead in law (the so-called “Freezer Bills”) and harvesting their organs also proved to be unsuccessful. The freezer vaults represented a finite supply and therefore were eventually exhausted.

• New Jersey Governor
• Virginia Governor
• New York City Mayor

Likely to be an early night.

More (but not much more) to come.

Vonnegut called them cat’s asses.

So your little more.  I do occasionally find something of interest at the Great Orange Satan and living in Stars Hollow as I do I found this little piece about a local election (in the biggest City in the State thank you) amusing-

Who Cares About VA, NJ, or NYC Elections? The Real Action is the Bridgeport, CT School Board!

by LunkHead @ Daily Kos

Tue Nov 05, 2013 at 09:28 AM PST

New Jersey and New York City are foregone conclusions.

Virginia is a contest that is really about the GOP’s voter suppression efforts.

Bridgeport is about whether or not we can protect our children from the looters in the educational industrial complex.

You see, the pro-privatization slate for the school board was defeated in the Democratic Primary by the Connecticut Working Families Party candidates, and so in the general election will be face Republicans, who are being tacitly, and in some cases explicitly, supported by the Democratic Party establishment (including governor Malloy).

I certainly try to vote WFP at every opportunity, they didn’t field or cross-endorse any candidates in Stars Hollow so I wasn’t able to this year.  Our local Democrats are at least pro-zoning and the environment however misguided they are about some other issues so I generally vote a straight ticket.  That and I know many of the Republicans personally and they’re straight up assholes the lot.  Those SAT fill in the dot ballots are a heck of a lot less convenient than the old mechanical voting booths, but you can put up a whole lot of stations for not much money.  They’ve also cut back on polling stations which I think sucks so I signed a petition to change that back.

They ran out of stickers so I can’t prove I voted, but it’s ok I have a lot left over from previous elections.

Your thoughts below.

Meet “badBIOS,” the mysterious Mac and PC malware that jumps airgaps

by Dan Goodin, Ars Technica

Oct 31 2013, 10:07am EDT

Ruiu said he arrived at the theory about badBIOS’s high-frequency networking capability after observing encrypted data packets being sent to and from an infected laptop that had no obvious network connection with-but was in close proximity to-another badBIOS-infected computer. The packets were transmitted even when the laptop had its Wi-Fi and Bluetooth cards removed. Ruiu also disconnected the machine’s power cord so it ran only on battery to rule out the possibility that it was receiving signals over the electrical connection. Even then, forensic tools showed the packets continued to flow over the airgapped machine. Then, when Ruiu removed the internal speaker and microphone connected to the airgapped machine, the packets suddenly stopped.

With the speakers and mic intact, Ruiu said, the isolated computer seemed to be using the high-frequency connection to maintain the integrity of the badBIOS infection as he worked to dismantle software components the malware relied on.

“The airgapped machine is acting like it’s connected to the Internet,” he said. “Most of the problems we were having is we were slightly disabling bits of the components of the system. It would not let us disable some things. Things kept getting fixed automatically as soon as we tried to break them. It was weird.”

It’s too early to say with confidence that what Ruiu has been observing is a USB-transmitted rootkit that can burrow into a computer’s lowest levels and use it as a jumping off point to infect a variety of operating systems with malware that can’t be detected. It’s even harder to know for sure that infected systems are using high-frequency sounds to communicate with isolated machines. But after almost two weeks of online discussion, no one has been able to rule out these troubling scenarios, either.

“It looks like the state of the art in intrusion stuff is a lot more advanced than we assumed it was,” Ruiu concluded in an interview. “The take-away from this is a lot of our forensic procedures are weak when faced with challenges like this. A lot of companies have to take a lot more care when they use forensic data if they’re faced with sophisticated attackers.”

Well, this story has been making the rounds recently and it’s my sad duty as a Computer Professional to tell you it’s theoretically possible.

Anything except a write once, disk at a time CD ROM, DVD, or Blue Ray can become infected.

Standard Industry Practice for virus removal is to take an ‘air gapped’ machine fresh from the box (and by machine I mean motherboard, video card, memory, power supply, case, monitor, mouse, and keyboard- that’s it) and a brand new hard drive, then install a fresh Operating System from scratch, add the strongest anti-virus software you happen to have, and finally scan and fix (hopefully) the media you think is infected.

In practice you work with whatever crappy spare parts you have on hand (after all, you may end up with an infected machine and have to re-do everything).

Back in the early days of flash BIOSes I and some of my colleagues argued that it was the perfect place to put a virus and therefore a very bad idea.  Today you can hardly buy a motherboard without one.

Likewise driver and Operating System updates require an Internet connection and then you’re connected to a source of possible infection.

I haven’t independently verified sonic transmission, but I’ve used an analog modem and it’s the same thing in principle.

So if it doesn’t already exist just like Tom Clancy’s Debt of Honor it soon will.

Scary huh?

Boring.

Yup.  Even more boring than Schumacher.  bmaz says so and I agree.

Let me tell you how it goes.  Vettel grabs the lead at the start and pulls out beyond the DRS margin (1 second) in the first two Laps before DRS is enabled and then drives off to a tire changing delta (15 to 20 seconds) and then there is no race at all.

No Bernie, position changes between back markers don’t count.  Both Drivers’ and Constructors’ Championships were clinched last week.  Why watch?

Not that it’s a total excuse for my lack of updates, truth is I’ve just been too busy to do it.

I have a life you know, and after 18 hours of hard work the absolute top item on my priority list is to grab a 3 hour nap and watch (yawn) Formula One because I’m just so into sports and it’s much more entertaining than America’s Cup or Major League Baseball or NCAA Hoopies or the Olympics or the Triple Crown or the Super Bowl or…

Anyway I do a lot of sports coverage and it’s just a grind after a while, especially when they are dull like Le Tour and Formula One turned out to be this year.  Sorry if you think that proves I’m less than serious about my art, I’m really very good at reproducing Elvis playing cards with dogs on black velvet and my prices are quite reasonable.

The big news this week is Kimi Raikkonen’s DQ for car non-compliance after Qualifying, not so much for the position change from 5th to 22nd as for what it reveals about Lotus-Renault’s finances.

You see 4th place and almost 100 points ahead of 5th (and only 24 behind Scuderia Marlboro in 3rd) should imply your program has some kind of credibility.  As it turns out Raikkonen hasn’t gotten a paycheck all season and unless the sponsorship deal comes through Team Lotus is unlikely to attract even a second rate driver like Hulkenberg as a replacement and will have to settle for Maldonado who never saw a crash he couldn’t get involved with.

Well, that’s just how it is if you’re not Red Bull.

I mentioned replacement and it’s old news that Raikkonen has been tapped to follow the ill-fortuned Massa at Scuderia Marlboro (who had the grace to stick with him through his injury, but who has been turning out sucky cars for 4 seasons now).  I wouldn’t read too much into Massa’s recent successes, I think he’s getting a gold watch for loyal service; it would be nice if he ended up with a car, but I don’t see it.  Kimi may even skip the last 2 races with Lotus-Renault to rest up for his new gig.

What really mixes up everything next year is the new blown six power plants and the fact that not only can they and their components break, but weight distribution and aero characteristics will change.  It will go to the teams with the best designers; Vettel is not only not that good a driver, he’s also a total tool who can’t take direction- a diva.  Witness the elevation of the distinctly mediocre Ricciardo as his second.

Of course my Dad (who’s the other reason I watch Formula One, the first being that it’s normally good blog fodder since it’s time predictable and limited) will think I’m missing the lede which to him is Alonso failing to make Q3 because he was sitting in the garage saving tires and then a spin left him without time to put in a hot lap.  I think it’s the remarkable performance of Mercedes with Rosberg and Hamilton and how they will do without Ross Brawn.  I personally think it’s a big mistake even though they’re replacing him with Paddy Lowe, formerly of McLaren, despite Hamilton’s sanguine reaction (remember, Lewis worked with him at McLaren) because if there’s one thing you can count on McLaren to do, it’s screw up race tactics and lose.

Softs and Mediums are on offer.  2 DRS Zones.

• Yas Marina
• Guardian Interactive Track
• Formula One Interactive Track

• Formula One Official Site
• NBC Sports Motor Sports

Pretty Tables below.

NSA chief Keith Alexander blames diplomats for surveillance requests

Paul Lewis, The Guardian

Thursday 31 October 2013 22.16 EDT

The director of the National Security Agency has blamed US diplomats for requests to place foreign leaders under surveillance, in a surprising intervention that risks a confrontation with the State Department.

General Keith Alexander made the remarks during a pointed exchange with a former US ambassador to Romania, lending more evidence to suggestions of a rift over surveillance between the intelligence community and Barack Obama’s administration.

The NSA chief was challenged by James Carew Rosapepe, who served as an ambassador under the Clinton administration, over the monitoring of the German chancellor Angela Merkel’s phone.

Rosapepe, now a Democratic state senator in Maryland, pressed Alexander to give “a national security justification” for the agency’s use of surveillance tools intended for combating terrorism against “democratically elected leaders and private businesses”.

“We all joke that everyone is spying on everyone,” he said. “But that is not a national security justification.”

Alexander replied: “That is a great question, in fact as an ambassador you have part of the answer. Because we the intelligence agencies don’t come up with the requirements. The policymakers come up with the requirements.”

He went on: “One of those groups would have been, let me think, hold on, oh: ambassadors.”

…

It also risked deepening the division between the Obama administration and the intelligence community, which have been briefing against one another throughout the week

…

Just hours earlier, secretary of state John Kerry appeared to lay the blame at the door of the NSA, when he said certain practices had occurred “on autopilot” without the knowledge of senior officials in the Obama administration.

Of course we’ve known for years that Beltway Political ‘Journalism’ is all about stenography and who’s in your Rolodex.  It’s been portrayed with stunning accuracy in TV and Movies since at least Murphy Brown and was called out to its face by Stephen Colbert at the 2006 White House Correspondents’ Dinner-

Here’s how it works. The President makes decisions. He’s the decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Just put ’em through a spell check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration? You know, fiction!

As Dan Froomkin said contemporaneously and presciently-

Once upon a time, I imagine, there was great value in throwing a party where journalists and politicians could mingle and shmooze and celebrate the things they have in common.

And indeed, if the press and this particular White House had an even moderately functional professional relationship, then a chance to build personal relationships would be a nice bonus.

But it’s not a functional professional relationship. From the president down to the freshest press office intern, this White House seems to delight in not answering even our most basic questions.

So the last thing in the world we need is a big party where the only appropriate mode of communication is sucking up.

Ideally, every chance we get to talk to these people, we should be pumping them for information. And ideally we would be consistent in expressing our frustration with them — not for personal reasons, not for partisan reasons, but because they’re making it nearly impossible for us to do our job, which is to inform the public on what’s going on in the White House and why.

The coziness of the dinner is a perfect example of what’s gone wrong with access journalism. What’s in it for the readers?

Here’s a very comprehensive recap by joanneleon of the reaction from 4/27/13.

But seldom do these shills and sycophants, these mindless mouthpieces proclaim their complicity as nakedly and thoroughly as they do in this piece today by what Charles Pierce of Esquire correctly calls Tiger Beat on the Potomac.

President Obama, off the record

By DYLAN BYERS, Politico

11/1/13 5:02 AM EDT

The president is a voracious consumer of opinion journalism. Most nights, before going to bed, he’ll surf the Internet, reading the columnists whose opinions he values. One of the great privileges of the presidency is that, when so inclined, he can invite these columnists to his home for meetings that can last as long as two-and-a-half hours.

“It’s not an accident who he invites: He reads the people that he thinks matter, and he really likes engaging those people,” said one reporter with knowledge of the meetings. “He reads people carefully – he has a columnist mentality – and he wants to win columnists over,” said another.

…

The off-the-record meetings are held over coffee around the long wooden conference table in the Roosevelt Room, just off the West Wing lobby. Participants vary depending on the issue of the day, but there are regulars.

People like David Brooks, E.J. Dionne, Joe Klein, Eugene Robinson, Ezra Klein, Fred Hiatt, David Ignatius, Jeffrey Goldberg, Thomas Friedman, Jonathan Chait, Wolf Blitzer, and Chuck Todd.

Think you should trust them to represent the interests of their readers, ask tough questions, or report the truth?  Read on.

The goal in these get-togethers, participants said, is two-fold: First, the president wants to convince the columnists that he’s right – about the debt ceiling, about health care, about Syria – and that his opponents are wrong.

“The president is thoroughly convinced that the course he has set out is correct, and that his opponents are either wrong-headed or crazy or, in the case of [House Speaker John] Boehner, insufficiently courageous,” said a journalist who has attended off-the-record meetings. “By getting together a group of intelligent people who are going to be writing about him or talking about him, he thinks he can show them how obviously everything he is doing makes sense.”

The second goal is more tactical: By meeting privately with the people who shape national opinion, the president ensures that his points of view will be represented in the media – even if those points of view aren’t directly attributable to him.

…

“He sees columnists as portals,” another journalist who has attended meetings said. “It works – I feel it work with me. It’s almost impossible to spend hours face-to-face with the president, unfiltered, then write a column or go on television without taking his point of view into account.”

…

Reading columnists or watching them on cable news after they’ve attended an off-the-record session at the White House thus becomes a form of tasseography. If you want to know where the president stands on a foreign policy issue, it is often said among Washington’s national security experts, read the latest column by David Ignatius.

…

Said a columnist who has attended multiple meetings, “When you can write your column with absolute surety, knowing that what you’re saying is a true reflection of what the President of the United States is thinking, how do you not do that?”

…

The modern practice of “off-the-record meetings,” however, was set in place by President Bill Clinton and his former press secretary, Mike McCurry.

In March of 1996, on a night-flight from Israel to Washington, McCurry came up with the concept of the “psych-background” session, in which reporters were not allowed to record, take notes, or directly attribute Clinton’s remarks – which, that night, ran to almost three hours. The point was simply to let reporters have a better sense of the president’s thinking.

…

The result, which even Clinton himself made fun of in his address at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner later that year, was that his remarks were attributed to an anonymous figure described as “the highest authority.” In the Washington Post, John Harris, now the editor-in-chief of POLITICO, wrote that McCurry had taken “the controversial Washington practice of anonymous sources and ‘background conversations’ to an unprecedented level.”

…

“I’m not going to deny that we hope this informs people’s reporting – the point is to have a good discussion, but also to deepen their understanding of our perspective,” the source familiar with the president’s thinking said.

Few columnists see an ethical problem in attending such “off the record” meetings, as they provide a greater understanding of the president’s thinking.

…

Both reporters and columnists believe he prefers talking to people who are thinking about – and willing to be influenced on – grand concepts, rather than those who might pepper him with questions about day-to-day events and process.

…

“The president cares a lot more about the opinions of Fred Hiatt or Tom Friedman than he does about the average U.S. Senator,” said one journalist. “He’s naturally predisposed to analysis. In his own mind, that’s what he is: he’s like us. He wants to be a writer, and so he likes to talk to writers.”