- Without fights, hockey is just……well, soccer on ice with a few less teeth in the mouths of participants. With fights……hockey is soccer on ice with a few less teeth in the mouths of participants and fists flying. The former is a yawner of a spectacle not worth watching, while the latter is a briefly entertaining brawl that you can’t help but pay attention to. The boredom factor is doubly present in a college hockey game such as the one pitting St. Olaf College against Carleton College. Thankfully, a game that would have been boring on a coma-inducing level became incredibly riveting after some good old-fashioned verbal abuse from the Oles (a common nickname for St. Olaf fans). At some point, that verbal abuse escalated to fans going soccer hooligan, throwing bottles and cans onto the ice. Even after St. Olaf was penalized its fans’ hooliganism, fans refused to calm down and a few minutes later, more cans and bottles were thrown onto the ice along with, you guessed it, freaking tires from the freaking zamboni. Of course they did, because no fan uprising is complete without removing tires from a piece of maintenance equipment and sending them projectile-style onto the playing surface. No one is quite sure how the zamboni tires ended up in the hands of students and the story is almost better if the truth is never known. However the tires ended up in the stands and in the possession of people willing to use them as projectiles, the players took the hint and began an apocalyptic brawl that raged on until a referee was somehow slashed in the face with a skate and lay on the ice with blood spurting from his head. At that point, the referees who remained upright and did not have massive quantities of blood leaking from their bodies quickly made the decision to cancel the remainder of the game and call it a draw. Neither team won, but by that point the result of the game was secondary. The brawls went from an on-ice phenomenon to an outside-the-arena phenomenon as police spent several hours clearing up fights outside the venue. Carleton missed out on a chance for a big win over a rival in a game in which it had a three-goal lead at the time the contest was stopped, but everyone else won big after once again a hockey game broke out at a fight…………
- Marietta, Georgia: Racism lives here. No, not everyone in Marietta is a blatant racist and despite Georgia being the definition of the Deep South in many ways, most of the town’s residents aren’t backwards-thinking ass hats spewing hateful racial stereotypes in the most public fashion possible. In fact, it’s just one man giving the city a black eye and that man’s name is Mike Norman, owner of Mulligan's Food and Spirits. At first glance, Mulligan's Food and Spirits is your typical bar - a bit dirty, a bit run down, not exactly high-class, but normal. Take one look at the bar’s roadside sign and that perception changes swiftly and drastically. "Wetbacks R Criminals. Hire One And U R Too! House Bill 87," the sign proclaims. For those not familiar with outdated racial slurs, “wetbacks” is a derogatory term for Mexican immigrants who cross into the United States illegally. For some odd reason, Marietta residents took immediate offense to Norman’s sign even though he insists it merely shows his support of legislation targeting illegal immigrants. "I would say to them to wise up. There's nothing racist about it. It's a fact. That's a term used for people who sneak into this country illegally," Norman stated in response to his critics. Maybe, but the N-word is a term used for people who are African-American and I don’t think anyone is going to throw that up on a business sign. Just because people have used a word to refer to a specific ethnic group doesn’t mean it’s cool for you to co-opt the term and use it in any way you choose. Local Hispanic leaders have labeled the sign racist and local activist Jerry Gonzalez believes it could incite violence against Hispanics in the area. "It's racist. It's pejorative. It's demeaning. It's dehumanizing," said Gonzalez. "We are concerned about violence against our community. This sign doesn't help. That type of hateful rhetoric is not appropriate for Georgia." Actually, it’s not appropriate anywhere other than 1850s southern states before their had their heads handed to them in the Civil War, but point taken. Norman is no stranger to offense messages and positions, having sold controversial shirts about Barack Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign. He plans to keep his current bigoted sign up for the foreseeable future and says he won't take it down until he “gets bored with it.” As for Gonzalez, he has threatened a sit-in at the bar if the sign remains up. For the rest of the world not directly involved in this fight, here is further proof that a) there are still anachronistic fools living in the distant past with its socially stunted views and b) every society has its idiots and America may have more than its fair share……….
- It’s time for the latest edition of “What’s attacking your computer today?” and today’s threat is a whopper. Literally millions of unique URLs have been infected with a rampant SQL (Structured Query Language, a database computer language designed for managing data in relational database management systems) injection attack that has been dubbed “LizaMoon.” In short, the attack has corrupted those millions of URLs and used them to redirect users to a fake AV site. The attack began with 28,000 websites but has quickly spread to include more than a million sites, with the problem spreading rapidly. Security firms have been dutifully tracking the “LizaMoon” attack since it started March 29 and its name originated from the first domain that victims were redirected to. Upon arriving at the redirected site, users saw a warning dialog that they had been infected with malware and a link to download a fake antivirus - the real virus. Further confusing matters, users are then shown a number of threats supposedly on their computer. However, the fake AV, Windows Stability Center, won’t remove them until the user pays a substantial fee. The
attack’s rapid growth has made it one of the biggest mass-injection attacks ever and shows no signs of slowing any time soon. Security experts are still struggling to determine how the SQL injection attack is happening and how to explain the fact that legitimate Websites have been compromised in a way that one line of code has been embedded on the site. A simple redirect code that executes when the user loads the page starts the process, but the majority of the action happens on the redirected page. There, a script containing Javascript code commences off the fake AV scam in earnest. Experts say they have a seen the code before, in Microsoft SQL Server 2003 and 2005 databases. The scam has reached across the globe in a few short days, affecting users in the United Kingdom, Kuwait, India, Australia, Turkey, Brazil, Israel, Mexico, Taiwan and Chile, among others. However, the bulk of the victims, at 47 percent, appear to be from the United States. The domains used in the attack including the redirect URLs and the server where the malware is hosted, have been traced back to a cluster of four IP addresses. The domains have all been registered using automatically registered accounts at Gmail as far back as October. Right now, the only good news is that users are hit with the Windows Stability Center scam only once, so visiting the site repeatedly doesn’t repeat the attack. The bad news? Very few antivirus programs currently on the market have been able to detect the Windows Stability Center. For now, the best defense against the scam is the same defense against so many schemes and sinister plots in the real world and digital world alike: Don’t be a moron……….
- Angry much, Elton John? Look, I realize that Sir Elton is an impassioned defender of anything and everything having to do with pro-gay and homosexual causes because that’s his lifestyle, but I think the foremost fan of feather boas and oversized fluorescent sunglasses in the world is missing the point in ripping Kings of Leon and calling them “assholes” who needed to “lighten up” just because they won't allow Glee and show creator Ryan Murphy - who is homosexual - to feature their music on the show. The show asked to use their hit Use Somebody and from there, it was a battle of words in the media in which both sides said things they probably should not have said. Alarmists wanted to point Kings of Leon as homophobic and lovers of good music simply wanted to support anyone who refused to allow their music to be used on a ridiculously overrated show like Glee. Being a purveyor of crappy pop music as he is, Elton John views a denial of a Glee request to cover one’s song a major compliment and has thus ripped Kings of Leon for viewing it as anything else. “There's a big debate going on about the Glee thing at the moment,” he said. “A lot of bands say they don't want their stuff on Glee. It's like, ‘Lighten up, you assholes’. This is a compliment; also it sends a positive message out. What the hell is wrong with you guys? ‘Oh, we don't want our music played.’ Well, Kings Of Leon, lighten up guys. Listen, when someone wants to do your song, it's a compliment.” Wrong, jackass. If you allow anyone who asks to cover one of your songs, then you’re going to end up with the impact and quality of your original tune being dragged down into the musical morass because a bunch of talent-deprived hacks are doing bad karaoke cover versions of it. So no, it is not a compliment, it’s a threat and a very real threat at that. That points obviously escaped Elton John by a wide margin. “It's so great when people do your songs,” he explained. “I started off as a songwriter. Even now, when I get into an elevator and hear music... I feel really happy when it's one of my songs because it's a compliment when somebody records or does one of your songs. It doesn't matter if it's a bad version, it's just a thrill.” Wrong and wrong, E-Jo. If William Hung or Kevin Federline wanted to cover Rocket Man or one of your other hits, don’t tell me you would be thrilled because you’re either lying or you’re an idiot…………
- There is always something to be said for going old school when it comes to riots and protests. While modern technologies and techniques are always welcome and organizing via Facebook and Twitter are great, any true riot lover’s heart is warmed when angry citizens pick up a rock or other crude implement and use it the way the good Lord intended it to be used - lobbing it at police, security forces or soldiers. That’s exactly what thousands of anti-government protesters in Yemen who are demanding the ouster of longtime leader President Ali Abdullah Saleh did on Saturday. Protestors in the southern province of Aden took to the streets and immediately looked around for the nearest rock to lob at anti-riot police backed by tanks. In between hurling stones, protestors also called for a general strike to further convey their message to The Man. The rocks that were too large to throw were turned into barricades at the entrance of main roads to prevent tanks from moving. All in all, it was a tremendous display of resourcefulness and anti-establishment spirit that may not have had social media organization, fancy signs and banners or advanced weaponry, but was still a rousing success and it even had the requisite scenes of tires being set on fire that always help to push a riot over the top in terms of quality. Don’t believe it? Many residents responded to the riot and its call for a strike by not going to work, so the message is getting out and resonating. Saleh has ruled Yemen for 32 years and has made it clear that he has no intention of stepping down quietly, so more riots and rock tossing will likely be needed to oust him from power. He claims that if he is ousted, Yemen will descend into chaos, boosting the al-Qaida presence already in the country, but that smacks of the very sort of alarmist, panic-driven thinking that a leader with a tenuous grip on power would use to incite fear in his constituents and prevent them from doing the right thing by driving him out of office……….
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