I first heard Ray McGovern speak on a country road in the New England hills. This was courtesy of the admirably dedicated David Barsamian, who broadcast one of McGovern’s talks on Alternative Radio in late-2013. Reception up here being spotty, I pulled over and sat watching the autumn clouds drift by for the full hour McGovern stood at the podium of a Methodist church in Seattle. I was rapt.
What a lost pleasure it is in our indispensable nation to be in the presence of someone who thinks, acts and speaks out of conscience and conviction. Even better, these were precisely McGovern’s topics that day three years back: The necessity of careful thought, of honoring one’s inner voice, of acting out of an idea of what is right without regard to success or failure, the win-or-lose of life. One way or another, these themes run through everything he has to say, I have since discovered. At an inner-city church in Washington, McGovern teaches a course he calls “The Morality of Whistleblowing.”
Meddling
It would’ve worked, too, if it weren’t for those meddling kids!
There are 617 posts filed in Meddling (this is page 14 of 62).
Calling all Time Warner customers to unite against its dreadful customer service | News & Observer
Former Raleigh City Councilor Barlow Herget wrote to the N&O about his abysmal recent experience at the Time Warner Cable office.
Mr. Herget asks if the City Council could change the law to go back to local control of cable TV franchises. Local control went out the window in 2005 when a group of “business-friendly” Democrats in the state legislature successfully passed the “state franchise for cable television” bill into law for their friends at Time Warner Cable. This stripped control of cable franchises from city and county governments and placed it in the hands of the state. It’s easier to pay off state leaderss rather than local leaders, it seems.
I predicted this would happen back in 2006 and time has proven me correct. I just wish I could’ve convinced more state legislators at the time.
I recently had the dreadful occasion to visit Time Warner’s office in Raleigh. We needed a “box” for a new television. It was a hot 95 degrees outside, and inside the Atlantic Avenue office, there were 35 to 40 people waiting, including one crying baby.
The room was the size of a typical school class. We took a number and asked how long we should expect to wait. Thirty minutes. We luckily found two chairs together and sat down.My fellow subscribers were lined along the walls, a few standing, more coming in. Mostly patient, the steam was starting to rise in some of these customers. There was an inane game show on a big screen TV that a few were watching.
One lady came in carrying a big box, saw the crowd and asked how long she had to wait. Told 30 minutes, she declared she was on her lunch break and, after waiting 10 minutes, departed, muttering, “Some people have to work for a living,”
Source: Calling all Time Warner customers to unite against its dreadful customer service | News & Observer
setupupgrade.fixbugs.club attempts to install malware
This morning, my wife returned to her Google Chrome web browser to see the following tab had been opened:
setupupgrades.fixbugs.club attempts to install a fake Adobe Flash player
The text reads:
WARNING: Your Adobe Flash Player version is out of date. Your computer is prone to malware attacks! Please update the latest Flash Player version
At the bottom of the page is this:
UPDATE INSTALL
About | End User License Agreement | Contact | Privacy | Terms of service | Download Manager | How to UninstallBy downloading, you accept our Terms of use and Privacy Policy. This free download is done via download manager which may offer other applications you can decline or uninstall. This site and the download manager have no relationship with the author. Software may also be available for free from the original author’s site.
setupupgrade.fixbugs.club © 2016 | All Rights Reserved.
Amazon’s customer service backdoor — Medium
Everything you do to secure your Amazon account Customer Service can undo in a heartbeat. A scary tale of how easily Amazon’s customer service can be socially engineered.
As a security conscious user who follows the best practices like: using unique passwords, 2FA, only using a secure computer and being able to spot phishing attacks from a mile away, I would have thought my accounts and details would be be pretty safe? Wrong.
Because when someone has gone after me, it all goes for nothing. That’s because most systems come with a backdoor, customer support. In this post I’m going to focus on the most grievous offender: Amazon.com
Charles with the Obamacare Open Enrollment Center
Last week I got this scam call in on my mobile number. The Caller ID said 347-215-3027 which, as I know from my years of telemarketing scam sleuthing, is almost certainly faked. Calls also come from 813-365-3765 and possibly others.
Here’s the recorded message that was left, made to sound spontaneous. People all over the country have gotten the very same message:
Yeah, hi. This is Charles, and I’m calling from the Obamacare Open Enrollment Center in your … uh … local neighborhood here … um I have your number here on my desk to give you a call … uh … basically … uh … let me see here … uh, the number … let me see … E477 that’s your registration number for the, uh … Obamacare … uh … insurance, so … just go ahead and give me a call back I want to go over a few things with you to get you set up so you don’t have any tax implications. You can call me DIRECT at 888-575-1448, again my number is 888-575-1448. Thank you!
I’ll have an audio clip to post later today.
Iran’s return of American sailors
Riverine Command Boat (RCB)
Let me start off by saying that last week wasn’t my Navy’s finest hour. When news came in Thursday night that ten U.S. Navy sailors had “drifted into Iran territorial waters” and had been detained, there was a sense of deja-vu. I thought about the collision in 2001 between a reckless Chinese fighter pilot and a Navy EP-3 surveillance plane. Known as the Hainan Island Incident, 24 sailors were detained for eleven days, interrogated at all times of day and night. The incident was George W. Bush’s first international crisis and it wasn’t clear things would be resolved amicably.
The Navy tends to avoid entering unfriendly waters (well … most of the time!). The Persian Gulf (or Arabian Gulf as the USN refers to it) is tiny as far as bodies of water go. Our sailors are well aware of who occupies the eastern shore of the Gulf and know to steer clear of it. That doesn’t mean that encounters between Iranians and Americans don’t still take place. I vividly recall how surreal it was to lock eyes with curious Iranian ferry passengers as they motored slowly by my ship once in the Gulf. It was clear at that moment how ridiculous the bluster of our respective governments was.
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How the FBI tracked down a Georgia woman tied to $4M in… | www.ajc.com
It turns out that Abby Kemp, the … um, babe jewelry thief, did some modeling three years ago. I wonder what drove her to a life of crime?
In 2012, a then-22-year-old Abigail Lee Kemp posed for a professional photo shoot. Young, pretty, brunette, she wore short dresses of black and red. Her high heels were steady on the balcony of a Midtown Atlanta high-rise, skyline stalwarts like the AT&T building standing tall in the background.
She bent over to touch the water flowing from a fountain, sat in front of an outdoor fireplace and stared into the distance. She smiled while a tattooed man suggestively touched her hips.
The same woman will be a few miles away Monday, in federal court at the Richard B. Russell building downtown. The FBI believes her responsible for a string of armed jewelry store robberies across five Southeastern states, crimes they say netted watches and diamonds worth millions.
Source: How the FBI tracked down a Georgia woman tied to $4M in… | www.ajc.com
Fact-checking a graphic on gun death statistics
I saw this graphic on Facebook on gun death statistics and decided it needed to be fact-checked. The graphic appears below with the “wrong” label so that others won’t be fooled by its claims.
The argument being made here seems to be that firearms aren’t that big of a cause of death and the author of the image appears to back it up with facts. Let me show you why this is not only an apples-to-oranges comparison but also … well, cherry-picked.
My ridealong with the Raleigh Police Department
Ready to roll with Officer Boyd
In July of 2015, I decided it was time again to take another ridealong with the Raleigh Police Department (RPD). I last did a ridealong in 2007 and learned so much about my community that I never would have learned otherwise. It seemed like a refresher was in order, so I contacted my beat officer, Officer J.D. Boyd, and we set up a Friday night to make it happen.
There were a few key differences for this ridealong compared to the last time. First, I got door-to-door service from RPD whereas last time I had to start and end at the Southeast District station. I also was afforded the use of a bulletproof vest which was not offered last time. Finally, I am a greenway volunteer with RPD and so I am not your typical citizen. I’m sort of part of the department. This means I got to do more during this ridealong than my last ridealong, but more on that in a minute.
The ridealong experience started with some prep on my part. Knowing that I would likely be up most of the night, I took a two-hour nap after work. This got me rested and alert for the ridealong. Without the nap I would’ve been toast!
Officer Boyd rolled up to my home about 9 PM and handed me my bulletproof vest to put on. I took a cue from my last ridealong and dressed nicely with a blue button-down shirt and slacks. If I was going to be meeting the public and potentially be in their homes I wanted to look professional. The vest wasn’t all that bulky but I was aware how it might get heavy if I had to wear it all the time. Once suited up, I returned outside.
Getting the lowdown on the gear
Boyd then gave me a quick rundown of safety stuff. He handed me a waiver to sign and then described where I could find his weapons and safety equipment, should I have to help him out. This was sobering! With a pic or two taken in front of his car, I waved goodbye to the family and we departed for our first call. It was a little disturbing how happy my son was to see his dad get whisked away in a police car!
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What really attracts business to North Carolina?
The front page of the News and Observer trumpeted that North Carolina’s population has finally exceeded 10 million. The story, written by Charlotte Observer reporter Ames Alexander and News and Observer reporter David Raynor, quotes a number of experts for their opinions about what brings them here.
Gov. McCrory says it’s the economy and quality of life (and he even works in a cheesy mention of the new state marketing motto):
“With our growing economy, great colleges and universities and quality of life, from the mountains to the coast, nothing compares to North Carolina,” Gov. Pat McCrory said.
Chuck McShane works for the Charlotte Chamber and should know what attracts people here:
“People are flocking for jobs, opportunities, mainly to our urban areas,” said Chuck McShane, the director of research at the Charlotte Chamber.
These two probably hear a lot from the companies that move here, so it’s understandable they were quoted. But then the reporters slipped this in (emphasis mine): Continue reading