Weaver95

How serious?  Even hardened criminals want nothing to do with him.

In part:

Chetry: What were you in there for?

Levine: Narcotics trafficking, securities fraud, racketeering, obstruction of justice, and machine guns. My whole case was organized crime.

Chetry: How busy are you as a consultant prepping people to go?

Levine: My phone rings off the hook. Everybody has a problem, everyone has a question. Some people I can help, some people I can’t. Now, I had Madoff’s reps get a hold of me before he went into custody and I turned them down. I wouldn’t help the guy out because I view him as an economic terrorist. If you rip off a bank and insurance company, an institution, that’s an acceptable crime. Bernie hurt people. He hurt people individually and I refuse to help people like that. Let him rot in hell.

Even hard core criminals don’t like Bernie.  This guy is a  former drug dealer turned prison consultant.  He takes money to help other criminals get ready to survive prison.  And THIS GUY wouldn’t take Bernie as a client.

Dude.  that’s harsh.

As part of my continuing effort to seek out new and interesting things that’ll put me on government watch lists everywhere in the world, I spend time in some pretty weird areas of the internet.  One of them is a place called ‘wikileaks’.  It’s like wikipedia, only it’s heavy on the encryption and likes to post material that someone somewhere in the world would really like to kill to keep quiet (sometimes literally).

Most of the stuff there isn’t really all THAT interesting.  Usually it’s 6th generation copies of some faded out of date government document that isn’t very revealing.  However, every now and then you run across something interesting. Like this, for example.

Oh yes.  interesting indeed.  See - the chinese government has been taking the threat of the internet VERY seriously.  They already feared that someone would organize the great unwashed masses like they have in Iran and kick off some sort of massive anti-government revolution.  So the Chi-coms developed Green Dam Youth Escort, which probably sounds a lot more poetic in it’s original language.  The Chinese government has mandated that no computer can be sold in their country unless this watchdog program is installed on the hard drive.

So that’s why the source code to this super secret evil program of doom being posted on wikileaks is so interesting.  You can download the source code, review it, look for flaws and develop code to exploit what you find.  And believe me, my brothers and sisters in the ranks of hackerdom everywhere can and will (eventually) poke huge freaking holes in this attempt at digital suppression of freedom.  Assuming they aren’t busy poking fun at Scientology, RIAA and/or setting up anonymous proxy servers for dissident Iranians of course.

Yes, that’s right folks!  Our wonderful glorious people’s provider of news, cable and internet is getting into the wireless internet business!  According to the details, it’s up and running in Atlanta, Baltimore and Portland but they’ll be expanding outwards.  Looks like you’ll get a free card if you sign up for a year, $99 for the card if you go month to month.  The service itself looks to be about $30-ish a month.

So Comcast is picking a fight with Verizon, Sprint and AT&T.  Brave of them.  Stupid…but brave.  Unfortunately for me, i’m stuck using Comcast for my cable and internet service.  And lemme tell ya - if their wireless product is anything at all like their regular ISP business, don’t bother.  Unless you WANT to pay lots of money to be randomly disconnected of course.  Oh, well maybe you get lucky and find a better spot to connect….don’t think you’re safe though because you can STILL be affected by the bandwidth cap. ain’t that spiffy?  pay all that money for service and you could be disconnected for going over your limit.  Did I mention that Comcast doesn’t tell you if you’re close to your limit either?  Oh yeah, forgot about that bit didn’t I?  Last time I spoke with a Comcast representative about that, they said that they still had no intention of telling subscribers just how close to their cap they are.   Let’s hope my guesstimating skills are still up to the challenge…but I digress!

Comcast is apparently going to go live with this in philly too, which should be quite interesting indeed since Earthlink has the current monopoly on wi-fi there right now.  I’m not sure about how coverage is downtown since I haven’t taken my laptop down to the city in a long, long time…but I doubt Earthlink will like the competition very much.  And fights over this sort of thing tend to get bloody ugly in the City of Brotherly Love.  Comcast should expect fierce competition from Earthlink, not to mention that the city government itself is going to be looking for a nice fat corporate handout (which they do from anyone who dares do business in the city).  Buckle down boys, yer in for a bit of a fight!

That said, it may be that Comcast ends up with a decent wi-fi product.  it’s hard to say since I haven’t actually tried this one out.  But given the random disconnects, bandwidth capping and general unpleasantness i’ve experienced with their main internet products and services (for lack of a better word) I can’t see how Comcast expects to succeed against a better organized, more entrenched opponent.   So I guess we’ll have to wait and see how it works out.  should be interesting to watch!

Yes, Rush has gone loony toons.  Limbaugh defended Michael Jackson today. plus, he smacked down a caller who dared suggest that there were lingering doubts as to the now deceased King of Pop’s sex orientation:

CALLER:  Well, instead of that they’re doing all these big stories on Michael Jackson — who, by the way, I am still convinced is a child molester.  Then you’ve got Farrah Fawcett, Billy Mays.

RUSH:  Wait a second now.  You’re no different than the media!  He was acquitted.

Acquitted doesn’t mean innocent there Rushbo, as well you know.  Actually, I’m not at all surprised Rush would defend the guy.  Sure, MJ was a weird dude.  His nose was rotting off while we watched - that had to have some significant effects on MJ’s mental state.  But Limbaugh defending MJ has to be the strangest of the strange.  I suppose that Limbaugh can only feel some sort of odd kinship with a grown man who liked to spend all his time with kids, lots and lots of pills and doctors who didn’t ask too many questions.

I wonder if Rush is planning another trip to the Dominican Republic any time soon?  No reason I ask…i’m just curious is all.

The Supreme court today made an interesting decision - consumers have the right to skip commercials after all.

Granted, that’s not what CNN said when they filed this particular lawsuit.  On it’s face, this was supposed to be an obscure trial concerning ‘rebroadcast rights’.  But consider the technology that this company had developed - namely giving customers the ability to store a show on a server for later replay and making it cheaper.  Right now a DVR device can be a bit pricey, plus someone has to come out and install it for you.  But if anyone could just subscribe to a service via the web and record shows somewhere else…then the ability to control your viewing experience is far more under your control than ever before.  Plus as the price drops, more and more people can access this sort of technology.

Hollywood types find this sort of situation intolerable because it allows consumers to skip over ads and get right into the show.  Partly this is because it makes it more difficult for them to make money via controlling intellectual property rights.  Much of the current philosophy behind the infotainment industry is based on controlling access to data and forcing people to pay for access.  But as data information technology becomes cheaper and more far reaching, that business model becomes unsustainable.  Sooner or later Hollywood is going to have to give up trying to control access to data and shift to a different model entirely.  Now as to the particulars of that business mode, we can discuss endlessly but the fact is that we haven’t even gotten to point where we can have that conversation yet.   Our infotainment overlords are still stuck in the old business model and aren’t willing to even consider giving it up.

Ranting aside, this was a good decision.  I’m glad SCOTUS was on the ball today.

Looks like things are starting to get ugly around here in terms of unemployment benefits.  Dept of Labor is sending out letters to 20,000 people that their turn at the money tap is over.  And things aren’t getting any better:

Labor and Industry Department Deputy Secretary Patrick Beaty says the agency sent letters to 21,000 people last week notifying them. He says there is still no letup in applications for benefits, and the agency does not expect the rising unemployment rate to ease in the coming months.

So jobs continue to bleed out of this state, Fast Eddie wants to raise taxes and Harrisburg is drowning in violence .

Ain’t summer in the midstate just grand?  I just hope there’s something left after Rendell gets done with us.

Yep, you heard correctly - 150 years . The judge threw the book at good old Bernie.  Here’s what the judge had to say:

“Here the message must be sent that Mr. Madoff’s crimes were extraordinarily evil and that this kind of manipulation of the system is not just a bloodless crime that takes place on paper, but one instead that takes a staggering toll,” Chin said.

So now the former rich white guy gets to spend hard time in a very, very bad place.  If there’s any justice at all he’ll end up in general population too, where he can hang out with all the other scam artists.  This sentence isn’t just symbolic, it’s pretty harsh.  Bernie is going to die in jail.  But that’s the price you pay when you go around stealing from people.  Eventually, sooner or later, you WILL get caught.  The one thing people always watch is their money.  So long as they’re making money, they’re happy.  The minute you start costing them money, they sit up and take notice.

Just remember though - Bernie broke the law and got a fair trial.  As heavy a sentence as this is, the whole thing is entirely and completely within the boundaries of the law.  It wasn’t vicious or vindictive it was merely the application of the law as it was intended to work.  It was a sign that our society is actually still viable, that justice can still happen even in a country where the legal system sometimes doesn’t do it’s job as well as it could.  But when the rich and powerful break the law and end up in general population with the rest of the prisoners, well that’s a sign that maybe we’ll be alright after all.  It tells me that money and power don’t yet completely control the court system.  I find that a hopeful sign indeed.

Dangerous, I know.  I really shouldn’t do that sort of thing late at night (it’s 2am as i’m writing this).  It’s bad for the digestion and keeps me up nights….

But like I said - i’ve been doing some thinking.  Mainly about Iran and now Honduras.  Not about the fact that revolution seems to be in the air this summer, as interesting a thought as that might be, it’s not of any specific interest to me.  No, what i’ve been thinking about is that these outbreaks of nationwide civil unrest seem to be cropping up with the suddeness of a thunderbolt.  Governments and protesters alike are jolted into action, with everyone involved (even the protesters) shocked at how fast things progress from simple disagreement to almost unbelievable levels of violence.  So that got me thinking about all sorts of oddball subjects.

One of those topics percolating in the back of my brain was this - what would I do if someone (government, protester, aliens from space…) seized control of the main communications services in this country.  Not that i’m saying that it WOULD happen.  I’m not even saying it COULD happen.  But what if it DID happen - how would I communicate with the ‘outside world’?

This was not an easy question to answer.  I spent a couple hours searching on google for some clue as to what sort of alternative communications networks are out there for us mere mortal civilians to use in case of widespread civil unrest, revolution and/or zombie apocalypse and lemme tell ya - I found very few solid answers.  Basically, what I came up with was the need for some sort portable communications set up.  Maybe something that could fit into the back of a car or van.

So for the technical challenge of it, I kept searching.  One of the things I found was something the FCC calls ‘ Multi-Use Radio Service’ or MURS for short. MURS is interesting because it seems easy to legally aquire, doesn’t need a federal license to operate and can transmit either voice OR data signals. MURS does some restrictions, specifically: