- Not only can he run an already downtrodden NBA franchise further into the ground and into a darker place than it’s ever been, but Minnesota Timberwolves president David Kahn can also stick his foot so far into his mouth that it’s bruising his esophagus with the best of ‘em. Kahn, known for terrible trades, botched draft picks and overall incompetence, took his idiocy to a new level following Tuesday night’s NBA draft lottery. Kahn, whose team had the league’s worst record this season and thus the highest probability of securing the top pick, ended up losing out on that spot to the Cleveland Cavaliers. Following the disappointing news, Kahn said with a smirk to a group of reporters, "This league has a habit -- and I am just going to say habit -- of producing some pretty incredible story lines." He proceeded to reference Washington sending the widow of longtime owner Abe Pollin last year and getting the first pick and Cleveland being represented this year by Dan Gilbert's 14-year-old son, who has battled disease since birth and suffers from a rare neurological disorder, for good luck. Joking about a 14-year-old with a serious disease and implicitly suggesting the league plays up such dramatic storylines tends to rub people the wrong way and Kahn quickly received intense criticism for his words. He doubled back and tried to spin his comments - which of course did not work. "I don't believe in jinxes, curses (or) hocus pocus, and I certainly don't think we were wronged,"
Kahn said. "But I do believe in the power of story, and I joked last night that it's a heck (of a) better
story for a 14-year-old kid to beat out a couple of middle-aged executives standing together on a
stage on national TV -- and that our league seems to always have its own share of luck in being a
part of these stories," Kahn said. "That was the entire meaning of what I said last night in a joking fashion and what I believe was received in such fashion." Yeah, no one else took it as a joke, at least not a funny or acceptable one. Intimating a conspiracy on behalf of the league to dramatize the storyline involving young Nick Gilbert representing his father’s team at the draft just doesn’t have a tremendous humor quotient. The NBA, no stranger to fining and reprimanding Kahn for doing stupid sh*t, did not immediately respond to questions about whether Kahn will be reprimanded or punished for his comments. He was fined $50,000 last summer for stating during an interview that Wolves forward Michael Beasley was "a very young and immature kid who smoked too much marijuana" while he was playing in Miami. Maybe you want to just stop talking for a while, Dave. Maybe sit the next few plays out…………
- If it’s not working, don’t fix it. That seems to be NATO’s motto when it comes to the ongoing civil war in Libya, with dictator Muammar Gaddafi waging a brutal and murderous campaign of terror against his own people and the international community bombing key Gaddafi strongholds around the country but not injecting itself directly into the conflict on the ground. The policy is akin to making sure the playing field is level for those fighting without actually doing any actual fighting. Judging by comments made Thursday by Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, NATO has no intention of changing its plan any time soon by putting put troops on the ground. "In the UN resolution, it is explicitly excluded to put boots on the ground, and we have no intention to do that and we have no intention to ask the UN to mandate the use of troops on the ground," Rasmussen said at a news conference in Slovakia. The situation in Libya has devolved into something of a stalemate, a bloody morass in which rebels and government forces trade minor victories and advantages only to have the other side come raring back. Gaddafi has made it clear he has no intention of stepping down and stands by the absurd notion that he has nothing to step down from because it is the Libyan people who truly have the power. Rasmussen refused to address reports that 's Gaddafi’s wife, daughter and top oil chief had fled the country, a claim that a Libyan government spokesman denied earlier in the day on Thursday. Flee, don’t flee. Do what you want because this conflict isn't going to end any time soon and NATO won't be doing anything to expedite the process………….
- How secure is the information on the average Android smartphone? Not that secure, clearly. According to researchers at Germany's University of Ulm, the vast majority of devices running Google's Android operating system are vulnerable to attacks that allow adversaries to steal the digital credentials used to access calendars, contacts, and other sensitive data stored on the Web giant's servers. This weakness is predicated upon the improper implementation of an authentication protocol known as ClientLogin in Android versions 2.3.3 and earlier, researchers said. Once a user enters valid credentials for Google Calendar, Contacts and possibly other accounts, the programming interface retrieves an authentication token that is sent in cleartext. That authentication can be used for up to 14 days in any subsequent requests on the service and attackers can exploit them to gain unauthorized access to accounts. “We wanted to know if it is really possible to launch an impersonation attack against Google services and started our own analysis,” the researchers in the university's Institute of Media Informatics wrote on Friday. “The short answer is: Yes, it is possible, and it is quite easy to do so.” Rice University professor Dan Wallach first tackled the subjected in February and he too found similar Android privacy shortcomings affecting Twitter, Facebook, and Google Calendar. While the attacks can only be carried out when the devices are using unsecured networks, such as those offered at Wi-Fi hotspots, users so often access wireless service in these places that the effects could be severe. Even after Google patched the security hole earlier this month with the release of Android 2.3.4, that version of the OS, and possibly Android 3, still cause devices synchronizing with Picasa web albums to transmit sensitive data through unencrypted channels, according to the University of Ulm researchers. Using Google’s own data and extrapolating, that means more than 99 percent of Android-based handsets are vulnerable to the attacks. A Google spokesman promised that the company's Android team is aware of the Picasa deficiencies and is working on a fix, but the vulnerability remains for now. The failure to fix the issue so far has also raised concerns over Google’s inability to convince its partners to upgrade to the latest versions of its OS. Many Verizon Wireless customers, for instance, are still saddled with Android 2.2.2. Considering its ambitions to rise in the smartphone market, one would imagine that Google would like to put this problem behind it and very soon……………
- Hey, what do you know? American Karaoke can actually be entertaining - just not for musical purposes. The music coming out of that televised atrocity is still gawd-awful and the single biggest affront to music in
its long and storied history. No good, original music is coming out of that crap-fest, but that doesn’t mean we can't find things to laugh at on AK and current karaoke-er Haley Reinhart proved as much by taking an awkward tumble during Wednesday’s edition of the show while she absolutely murdered and forever ruined Led Zeppelin’s “What Is and What Should Never Be.” What should never be is an AK contestant singing any song by Led Zeppelin, the Beatles, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, the Rolling Stones, The Who or any other band that has ever been remotely good. But I digress……..Reinhart, whoever the hell she is, went down hard and had her version of the song been any good, the fall might have ruined the performance. As is, her take on the song sucked exponentially and she merely picked herself up off the star and finished the song with a forced smile. The stool pigeons who double as American Karaoke’s judges seemed to pity her after the fall, with former rock icon and current sellout Steven Tyler went with the ultimate cliché, “It’s not how many times you fall, it’s how many times you get up.” The one AK judge whose music has always sucked nearly as much as the music of those she’s now “judging,” pop hack Jennifer Lopez, reminded everyone that she fell onstage during one of several failed pre-Idol comeback attempts. Of course, Lopez has never been good or talented musically and so her fall really didn’t do much damage (her ample backside may have had something to do with her surviving the fall unscathed as well). In that respect, she’s the perfect person to advise Reinhart. And the guy who says “Dawg!” a lot chipped in with “In it to win it! In it to win it!” like a broken robot. The true miracle in all of this is that a show with…..umm…..however many seasons American Karaoke has had and as many awkward losers as the show has featured, is that there haven’t been more falls. Thanks for reminding the world that you can still be entertaining for a full five seconds, AK……………
- Can we stop stereotyping the freaking Unabomber, American law enforcement? The guy sends mail bombs to a few people and suddenly there’s an all-out rush to pin every unsolved case from decades gone by on the guy? Okay, so technically it’s just one unsolved case……for now. Still, the FBI wanting to take DNA samples from "Unabomber" Ted Kaczynski in connection with their investigation into the 1982 incident in which seven people died after taking Tylenol capsules laced with potassium cyanide just feels wrong. As the bureau re-examines the 1982 Tylenol poisonings, its Chicago field office attempted to secure DNA from numerous individuals, including Ted Kaczynski, confirmed Cynthia Yates, FBI spokeswoman. "To date, Kaczynski has declined to voluntarily provide samples," Yates stated. That’s not what Kaczynski wrote (yes, wrote) in a handwritten motion filed in federal court aimed at stopping the online auction of possessions taken from his Montana cabin in 1996. In that mini-manifesto, Kaczynski writes that he did agree -- with a condition -- to provide the sample. "If it happens by chance that I fit one of the partial DNA profiles that the FBI has in relation to the 1982 cyanide incident, then it will be not only to my advantage, but to the advantage of society in general, to resolve correctly the question of any putative connection between me and the cyanide incident. For this purpose, some of the evidence seized from my cabin in 1996 may turn out to be important," and the auction should not go forward, Kaczynski penned in his court filing. For anyone not fully versed in Kaczynski’s dark history as a domestic terrorist/manifesto writer/cabin dweller, he killed three people and wounded 23 others in a string of bombings from 1978 to 1995 and was dubbed the "Unabomber" by the FBI dubbed him because of his early targets -- universities and airlines. He is now serving a life term in the federal "Supermax" prison in Florence, Colorado. As a federal prisoner, there should already be a DNA sample on file for him, as per federal regulations. Yet Yates would not comment on whether federal authorities already have a DNA sample from Kaczynski or when the request for his DNA was made. So what credible evidence does the FBI have linking Kaczynski to the Tylenol case? Honestly, little to none. The case in question involves seven people in the Chicago area who died in 1982 after taking Extra-Strength Tylenol capsules laced with potassium cyanide. The cases caused a national panic, with drug stores pulling Tylenol off their shelves and people in several cities were hospitalized on suspicion of cyanide poisoning. Major changes in the way over-the-counter drugs were packaged and sanity was restored, but the case was never solved. Then in February 2009, the FBI announced it was working with Illinois state and local police to review evidence related to the killings. Somehow, Kaczynski’s name was thrown into the mix even though he insists he has never used or possessed potassium cyanide. "I have never even possessed any potassium cyanide," Kaczynski said. "But even on the assumption that the FBI is entirely honest (an assumption I'm unwilling to make), partial DNA profiles can throw suspicion on persons who are entirely innocent. For example, such profiles can show that 5%, or 3%, or 1% of Americans have the same partial profile as the person who committed a certain crime,” he wrote. He claimed that he would provide the sample voluntarily "if the FBI would satisfy a certain condition that is not relevant here” without expounding on what that condition might be. All in all, it’s a situation shrouded in mystery and yet it smacks of The Man typecasting one reclusive sociopath who happened to mail dozens of bombs to total strangers…………
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