If your going to steal a movie, why not steal 33 of them? And why a crappy DVD when you could get a Blue-ray? I can understand what Lisa was going through, well except she doesn’t even look like the type that would own a Blue-ray player. Here is the news article, from my wonderful state of Oklahoma. . .

Police arrested a woman at a Target store in Oklahoma City after an employee said he saw her stuff nearly $1,000 worth of Blu-ray discs in her pants.

Lisa Roshelle Myles, 40, remained at the Oklahoma County jail this morning in lieu of $4,000 bail, jail records show. Police arrested her June 2 on complaints of grand larceny, assault and battery, trespassing and three Oklahoma County warrants.

An employee at the Target store, 8315 N Rockwell Ave., called police about 8:35 a.m. June 2 after employees detained a woman they said had stolen Blu-ray discs, which are similar to DVDs, according to a police report. The employee said the woman, whom the report identifies as Myles, had previously been arrested for stealing from that and another Target store.

Employees told police they saw a woman stuffing the discs in her pants and attempt to leave the store without paying, and she bit and clawed at them when they confronted her, the report states. A search revealed Myles had 33 discs in her pants worth more than $970, police said.

(Via NewsOK)

We have had a good run, but I don’t just see making a lifetime commitment to you. It is scary and sad to leave someone you have been with for a long time. Fear of being alone, will you really ever find a replacement? But it is a decision that came after another TiVo in the house died.

There are tons of articles covering the legal, and illegal, ways of transitioning from broadcast television to broadband television. Once I found the world of Vuze and Boxee the only thing that concerned me is my four year old son. How to replace hours of cartoon network and Disney shows.

Most of the reason of the switch has to do with convenience. This is the world I live in, I want things to work together, easily and quickly. When I am on the road I want to be able to watch my shows on my iPhone. When I am at home i want to be able to watch my shows on my TV. Honestly Vuze I have found to be the best fit. Not only can I subscribe to the RSS feed of my show so that it is automatically downloaded, but it will convert it and put it on my PS3 or my iPhone. Giving me the mobility I need.

But how to keep my son from loosing his shows? It was actually an easier task than I originally thought it would be. Boxee is a great media platform for the Mac that you can run on the Apple TVs. With it’s interface with Hulu I was set. Thankfully my son is obsessed with classic cartoons such as The Pink Panther, and those are shows that are in abundance on Hulu.

Needles to say the extra $75 a month I save is nice, but don’t think it doesn’t have it’s drawbacks. Such as a lot of live events that you can’t find streamed on the Internet. I don’t watch the news, so that wasn’t a problem normally, but what about in extreme weather.

All and all, so far it has worked out well. Even with wife not being very tech savvy, she is happy with the free HD content found online, most without commercials. It is all about ease of use, and most of that thankfully comes from Vuze.

UPDATE: I just found a piece from The Washington Post over this same thing almost.

I have been hesitant to post about this. It is a great idea, but I am not sure if it is real since I can’t find anything an their website, and the blog doesn’t show it. I will just let Dizzy Thinks sum it up for you.

Well I have to admit that this is genius. The guys from the Pirate Bay have a a 30million SEK fine which they say they won’t pay. However they have come up with a plan where all their users can join in which works like this.

Everyone sends a small amount of money in an electronic transfer to the law firm that represnted the music industry. Suggested amount is 1 SEK (equivalent to 0.13 USD. Apparently the law firm’s bank account is only allowed 1000 electronic transactions before it starts to cost them, the account holder money.

The charge per transfer at this point is, wait for it… 2 SEK. Thus after the first 1000 SEK, if people send just 1 SEK it will cost the law firm more than the money they receive to process.

Welcome to the Distributed Denial of Dollars attack (DDo$)

True or not this is one of the smartest things I have heard all day. I am sure they would somehow get it reversed, but for the small amount it would take to try it, I am all for it. Where do I send the money?

(Via Dizzy Thinks.)

We all know that malicious activity comes in many flavors. From the mostly simple DDOS, to DNS records, to a combo web hack. I have to give the guys that took down the Virginia PMP some credit, they are either really smart or really dumb. Here is what the Virginia PMP staff found on their website this morning:

ATTENTION VIRGINIA

I have your shit! In *my* possession, right now, are 8,257,378 patient records and a total of 35,548,087 prescriptions. Also, I made an encrypted backup and deleted the original. Unfortunately for Virginia, their backups seem to have gone missing, too. Uhoh

For $10 million, I will gladly send along the password.

(Mirror of the full page)

Goes on to tell how to get a hold of them and all that good stuff. I know how I would do it, but I have the benefit of hoping on a plane when I want. Never underestimate the difference geographical location changes make. The best botnet in the world only protects you so much. So it will be interesting to see how this plays out.

The reason I find so much interest in this is because I feel it is the future growth of the hacking industry. Be it good or bad, people are greedy, and it doesn’t matter the industry. We have seen that with the home market, the financial market, and let’s not even bring Enron and likes into this. So how do you make money hacking?

You steal, manipulate, and sell informatian. Getting the data can be the easy part. Brokering an illegal trade can be the biggest challenge you will face. The problem is for this company, or organization, the easiest way is not to pay. You mail your customers a form letter with a line like, “Your personal information MAY have been comprimised.” Give them a number to call, and offer them free 6 months of credit monitoring. So how do you get them to pay in my opinion?

Media attention has really put hacking into the forefront. With the leaked plans of the JSF, Marine 1, then the power grid, there is a lot to talk about. I would think the most helpful thing to do, for the hackers at least, is to get some public out cry. Drive a media blitz. If you don’t drive the media to this, and have potential patients demand the PMP to pay it out to protect their data, then you will never get a payout.

What are your ideas? How do you manage to launder millions without getting caught?

When asked about legalizing pot, Arnold replied, “Don’t be a girlie man, I’ll be back, to pump you up, hasta la vista, baby.” True story.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Tuesday that California should study other nations’ experiences in legalizing and taxing marijuana, although he is not supporting the idea.

(Via NBC Los Angeles.)

I had high hopes for Obama. I was sadden that his presidency was pretty much destroyed by the financial market, but maybe he would go two terms. Then he started really winning me over by taking the entire MPAA/RIAA legal staff and placing them into every public position he could find. So at this point I have became the fair weathered fan, but if you want to see him spin the attacks, and evade the questions he will be all over the TV tonight. And in even more change, he will actually be streamed live via YouTube. Google has this in the blog:

The first three months of the Obama Administration have brought the new American President unprecedented challenges. Back in November, when he was elected, everyone knew the economy and the Middle East would be critical issues for Obama to attack early on. But like every president before him, he’s had to deal with the unexpected as well: who could have predicted pirates off the Somali Coast or swine flu?

As citizens and pundits from all political perspectives analyze the President’s first 100 days in office today, Obama himself will address the nation tonight on the 100-day anniversary of his inauguration — and we’re going to carry a live stream of the conference from the White House YouTube channel. Be sure to tune in at 8pm EDT to watch it live.

We’re also featuring commentary and analysis from top news organizations on our homepage today.

(Via The Official Google Blog.)

Gawker has a piece about the ongoing battle in Oklahoma over the Flaming Lips song ‘Do You Realize??’ being adopted as the state song.

‘Do You Realize??’ is a 2002 song about Hewlett Packard printers, Land Rover SUVs, and the inevitable death that approaches us all. Oklahoma Republicans objected to the idea of conferring such a high honor on the Flaming Lips because their bass player is a communist and singer Wayne Coyne has a potty-mouth.

Rep. Corey Holland, R-Marlow, was offended when band member Michael Ivins wore a red T-shirt with a yellow hammer-and-sickle emblem, a traditional symbol of the Communist Party, during a visit to the Capitol last month.

‘The great thing about this country is he has the right to make whatever statement he wants to make,’ Holland said. ‘I have the right to be offended by that.’

The shirt was a Christmas present to Ivins from Coyne’s wife, and he wore it to a rehearsal earlier that day, said Coyne, who was offended by Holland’s implication that the band is un-American.

State Republicans also admonished Coyne for his recent critical remarks about the Arcade Fire—Coyne called the fellow indie rockers pompous and accused them of mistreating their crew—and for failing to return to the experimental territory staked out by the band with 1997′s Zaireeka.

After the measure failed, Gov. Brad Henry pushed it through as an executive order. Coyne told the Tulsa World yesterday that the dust-up was caused by a ‘little minority of some small-minded religious wackos who think they can tell people what kind of T-shirts and what kind of music they can listen to, and the smart, rational, reasonable people of Oklahoma are never going to buy into that.’

I honestly don’t listen to the Flaming Lips, and I really didn’t know why they would be adopting the song in the first place. But one thing that is not talked about here is that they band was actually formed in Norman, Oklahoma, so it makes a little more sense.

I do love the quote from Coyne, “dust-up was caused by a little minority of some small-minded religious wackos who think they can tell people what kind of T-shirts and what kind of music they can listen to.” I think that pretty much sums up most of the older generation of Oklahoma. This is a state where have the churches are being threatened by the IRS to take away their tax-exempt status after telling people they were going to go to Hell if they voted for Obama.

(Via Gawker.)

Wired has an article of a man arrested in Oklahoma for making threatening Tweets.

An Oklahoma City man who announced on Twitter that he would turn an April 15 tax protest into a bloodbath was hit with a federal charge of making interstate threats last week, in what appears to be first criminal prosecution to stem from posts on the microblogging site.

Daniel Knight Hayden, 52, was arrested by FBI agents who identified him as the Twitter user CitizenQuasar. In a series of tweets beginning April 11, CitizenQuasar vowed to start a “war” against the government on the steps of the Oklahoma City Capitol building, the site of that city’s version of the national “Tea Party” protests promoted by the conservative-leaning Fox News.

“START THE KILLING NOW! I am willing to be the FIRST DEATH!,” read a tweet at 8:01 PM that day. “After I am killed on the Capitol Steps, like a REAL man, the rest of you will REMEMBER ME!!!,” he added five minutes later. Then: “Send the cops around. I will cut their heads off the heads and throw the[m] on the State Capitol steps.”

The FBI arrested him at his home later that day, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Oklahoma City, which otherwise declined to comment on the case.

Makes me miss the crazies of my home state (where is that stupid tear emoticon?) Don’t get me wrong, Texas has it’s fair share of rednecks, but I live in a bubble down here that shelters me from all the fun. The interesting thing is how this will play out in court since the threats were with Twitter. It does go on to say that the judge released him to a half-way house later that day, leading me to believe the threats weren’t that creditable in the first place.

(Via Wired)

This picture by alt1040 pretty much sums up what I posted last week about Google. Of course the victory even looks to be shorter lived now that Judge Nordstrom had some serious conflict of interests. Chris Matyszczyk over at CNET has a story with some pretty good quotes from our favorite judge.

Judge Nordstrom declared: “Every time I take a case, I evaluate if I consider myself having a conflict of interest. In this case I didn’t find to have one.”

I know there must be some of you out there who are asking the question: “How hard did you look?” I find myself asking the question: “How hard is your head?”
Judge Norstrom must have known that this would be a fairly notable case. His name would waft through the newspapers. His views would be scrutinized for their fairness.

So isn’t it a little odd for him to say, as it perhaps seems to some: “You know, I thought really hard about whether my membership of the Swedish Copyright Association and the Swedish Association for Industrial Legal Protection might influence my impeccable judgment. But then I had a whiskey and thought to myself ‘hey, this is a juicy case’”?

But if Judge Norstrom was truly an impartial, brilliant, expert judge, might he have not offered the following quote: “This is a sensitive case. So before I agreed to hear it, I asked some of my fellow judges whether they considered that I would be in a position of conflicting interests. Two judges said absolutely not. While a third said he wasn’t quite so sure. I went with the majority.”

Something tells me this case is going to last forever. Lets see if the MPAA/RIAA and all those guys are stupid enough to try to bring Google into the mix.

(Via CNET, and Gizmodo)

CNET has an article over what appears to be a power struggle on the role of cybersecurity efforts for the US. First created in 2002, and incorporated into the Department of Homeland Security, government auditors have decided that the DHS is not living up to its “responsibilities.”

The announcement of the review led to speculation that the White House’s National Security Council or the National Security Agency would be handed more cybersecurity responsibilities, along with a larger budget to carry them out. Although the 2002 law creating DHS centralized cybersecurity responsibilities, it has been repeatedly criticized by government auditors who concluded that DHS failed to live up to its responsibilities and may be “unprepared” for emergencies.

On Tuesday, NSA Director Keith Alexander downplayed reports of a power grab by his agency, saying, “We do not want to run cybersecurity for the U.S. government.” The NSA has cybersecurity responsibilities for the U.S. military.

Alexander’s remarks appeared to be a response to Rod Beckstrom, former director of Homeland Security’s National Cybersecurity Center, whose resignation letter last month blasted what he described as an NSA power grab that could threaten “our democratic processes.” That led some members of Congress–including the Democratic chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee–to object to NSA control, which Clinton-era FBI director Louis Freeh echoed a day later.

Power struggle? Lets look at a couple of recent articles:

Computer Spies Breach Fighter-Jet Project (WSJ)

Blueprints of Obama’s Marine One helicopter leaked on P2P (SC Magazine)

Hackers Target U.S. Power Grid (Washington Post)

Now if you were the head of any US department, would you want the mess of trying to clean up the cyber threats for the entire country? We all know hacks are going to happen, and pretty much the only secure computer sits in a room, locked up, and unplugged. Being over the “cybersecurity” role of the US right now is just asking to be blamed for everything. NSA is having a congressional panel peeking over their should while they are trying to pee right now, I believe the last thing they want to deal with is the questions of “how did you allow the hackers to do that?!?”