Archive | June, 2011

BBC, known world-wide as a sober, clear-minded organization free from prejudice and unaffected by influence, today reported such an array of bizarre shit as to stagger the under-informed mind.

Check this out:

“- ‘Indestructible’ botnet uncovered
More than four million PCs have been enrolled in a botnet security experts say is almost “indestructible”. The botnet, known as TDL, targets Windows PCs and is difficult to detect and shut down.

A ‘botnet’ is a network of home PCs that have been infected with a virus that allows the infector to criminally access the computer. Sometimes, these criminals simply steal data from the infected computers. At other times, they use the infected computers to send out spam, or commit cyber-assaults on other victims.”

This botnet has been through three revisions. The current version, TDL-4, infected 4.5 million computers in the last three months. It installs itself mostly from booby-trapped porn and bootleg movie sites, but has been also found on sites that offer storage of videos and stills.

Find the article here.

And there’s an article about a monster black hole, so far from Earth that the light we’re seeing left it in less than a billion years after the Big Bang. And we all know how cool that is.

But wait, there’s more:

– Bug makes record noise with penis

Scientists from France and Scotland recorded the aquatic animal, Micronecta scholtzi, “singing” at up to 99.2 decibels, the equivalent of a passing freight train, or a loud orchestra heard from the front row.

This creature, an insect – a water bug – makes its noise by rubbing its penis against its abdomen, a process known as “stridulation”.

What researchers found remarkable was that the creature that makes this enormously loud sound is less than 2mm in total length. The article did not specify the length of its penis. They say it does not matter. Song is song. I wonder.

If you’re like me, you may have had occasion to do just this sort of thing in the course of mating, ritualistic or not. I must say, in those times, I may well have sung. And if so, I’m sure it compared to a passing train.

You can find the article here.

From msnbc.com, we learn, “The Vatican has announced the launch of a social media-integrated official news website, news.va …” According to reports, it will be launched by a mouse click from Pope Benedict XVI himself, surrounded by cherubin and seraphim and serenaded by the music of instruments of nine and eleven strings.

Concordant with this announcement was that of Msgr. Phenal G. O’Reilley, of St Cayetano’s parish in Youngstown, Ohio. According to him, confessional kiosks will soon be available to the public. The first will be in Youngstown, but soon thereafter they will start appearing in cybercafés in Cleveland, Toledo, and Weirton, WV.

Confession will first be ‘heard’ via chat. Within the year, though, a complete changeover to Skype is expected. At that point, the confessionals will be equipped with microphones and cameras, although use of the camera is up to the penitent.

The kiosk, which will have a door similar to any other confessional, will contain a kneeling pew and a computer, firmly mounted and secured. The computer screen will show the usual confessional screen, with the shadow of a man seeming to move about behind it.

Plans now include 24/7 operation. In off-hours (midnight – 8am), the process will be entirely automatic. The computer will run a program called “Confessor”, a variation of the famed “Eliza” program designed at MIT in the early ’60’s, which seemed to conduct psychoanalysis. It is said to be responsible for many cures in the Cambridge, MA, region.

“Eventually, I’d like to see the kiosks offer communion, too,” said Msgr. O’Reilley. “It all depends on whether we can find wafer-vending apparatus that can hold a blessing.”

In other news, former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich characterized himself as “stunned” by guilty verdicts in his corruption trial. “I figured I’d covered my tracks pretty good,” he said. “Better than that, anyways.”

Blagojevich will join George Ryan as the only two living ex-Governors of Illinois who are currently in prison.

Yesterday, CitiCorp absent-mindedly reported that last month’s hack of their system ‘seems to have resulted’ in a $2.7 million robbery. Coincidentally, Gary Foster, a former CitiGroup VP, was arrested that afternoon as he got off a plane from Bangkok at JFK Airport for embezzling $19 million and change. Arraigned this morning, Mr Foster pled innocent and claimed his CPA, a Mr John Smith of Goldman, Sachs, could account for his every penny.

And Bernie Madoff, fraudulent ‘financier’, complained that the 150-year prison sentence he received from Judge Denny Chin was “way harsh.” Judge Chin replied, “Hahahahahahahahahahahaha, that’s rich.”

This morning:

– In Waterloo, IA, her birthplace, Michele Bachmann formally announced her presidential candidacy in the living-room of a lovely, well-kept farmhouse. She was surrounded by family and friends, and after the announcement, coffee and home-made cupcakes were served by the cherubic children. In keeping with her theme of cash-on-the-barrelhead, no deficit spending, she paid for the rental of the family, friends and farmhouse with a personal check handwritten to the Family Rental Agency of Keokuk. An onlooker was heard to say, “Don’t it look natural?”

– An arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court in the Hague for Libyan strongman Moamar Gadhafi was thrown out by a Common Pleas magistrate in Tripoli on the grounds that Mr Gadhafi’s name was misspelled. When asked, “What is the correct spelling?”, the magistrate threw up his hands and said, “Search me.” The International Crime Detectives to whom he was speaking at the time immediately did so. They found a 9-volt battery and a roll of halal Rolaids, which they ate.

– Citibank ‘discovered’ $2.7 million was stolen during May 10’s hack of their system. Well, they can show their system was hacked, May 10. They can show that $2.7 million is missing. We know who hacked them. Do we need a map, then? Yeah, we do. Keep your hands where we can see them, CitiGuys. It’s just a routine procedure.

– In a followup to the above, The Wall Street Journal broke a story about a former vice-president in Citigroup’s internal treasury finance department, Gary Foster, accused of embezzling $19 million from corporate accounts. There is no indication of any deep interest on Foster’s part in computer security either before, during or after the period (2008 – 2010) during which he embezzled the funds. His attorney, Max Bialystock, of Bialystock & Bloom, insists this is “all a big, big mistake”, the details of which will become clear “in the next few days,” just as soon as he and Mr Foster get back from a pre-arranged business trip to Bangkok.

– CNN announced the invention of something by a Canadian nuclear physicist that will revolutionize our thinking about energy production, and may well provide flood-proof, earthquake-proof, non-overloadable, uninterruptable power for the rest of our lives. Unfortunately, their network connection failed and the story was never posted. O well.