Insecure Banking

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I wrote a letter to one of my banks regarding the deplorable security of their online banking system. Then I scrapped it because I thought it was too mean and wrote another one. Here it is:


One of the concerns of the website I run is about security, be it personal or electronic, and I was wondering, is there was someone I could conduct a short email interview with for an article I'm writing about online bank security in the modern age?

As you're no doubt aware, electronic crime is on the rise, and banks everywhere are scrambling to keep ahead of the crooks, who are finding all kinds of new ways to break in and steal money, often without leaving much of a trace.

Sunday Funnies 11-10-30

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It's funny: I started out this month thinking I had enough stuff to do two posts per week, and I could probably keep up that pace for a while, maybe throw a third article in there once in a while. Then I decided to add the Facebook page (LIKE it, or I'll give you a cat!) and kept bumping into some really good stories to share and things to talk about, so I've been posting FOUR articles a week and even feeling like that's not enough. Before too long, I may hit that magical seven per week, just you wait! If I can drop 60-some pounds with almost no effort, I can find a way to get a new article written every day. Of course, that pushed the book back, but that's okay, it can wait a few more days.

The site's numbers keep climbing faster and faster. Exciting! October was our biggest month yet, with the record being broken just a few days ago, leaving this last week as gravy to get the bar up there even higher for next time. If this keeps up, by the end of the year, we'll be hitting 35,000 visitors in the past 18 months!

And tomorrow is Halloween! Everyone got your candy and your costumes ready?

Here's some more stuff that happened last week; pay close attention:

Stimulus Money Used to Employ Foreign Guest Workers Instead of Americans

All sides should agree: down with the Big Banks - Most of our Founding Fathers warned us about them. Shoulda listened!

A new way to buy real influence - Like politicians need even MORE ways to embezzle without us knowing.

New York cops defy order to arrest hundreds of ‘Occupy Albany’ protesters

Not all GOP candidates opposed to Occupy Movement - There is one with his country's best interests at heart.

OWS's Beef: Wall Street Isn't Winning, It's Cheating

Iraq veteran hit with police projectile during Occupy Oakland demonstration - In the days since, a lot has happened, but here's the original report.

Ten Reasons Not to Bank On (or With) Bank of America - See if their list matches up with your list.

Denver PD hospitalize protester: Occupy Together - The scary thing is most of these police brutality events are inflicted on people who aren't even protesting, they're just there observing!

That's all for this week. Still cranking out plenty of articles, so keep checking the site daily, and if you haven't done it yet, you've still got a chance to be among the first 100 people to click the LIKE button or become a follower. Hurry, this offer won't last much longer!

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You are a Peter

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A system which robs Peter to pay Paul will always have Paul's support. What the majority of people don't realize is who Peter and Paul are in this story, or why Paul thinks he needs money.

The richest 1% own the media. They also own the governing bodies. Why? Because they have more money than the other 99% put together. Is that really equality under the law? (Hint: No, it's not.) For hundreds of years, the common man has fought for his right to be heard. God-emperors were toppled, Kings eliminated, Tsars banished, and so forth, because the public at large wants to be treated fairly by the law. Equal justice should be available to all who work for it, not just to those rich enough to corrupt the system.

Road Trip 3 - Meeting Wyatt Earp

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The legend of Wyatt Earp begins in Dodge City, which is in south-central Kansas. The "Queen of the Cow Towns," Dodge City was a nexus for enormous cattle drives heading to markets like Chicago. Earp's history before then was rather speckled and inglorious, but in Dodge he started to make a name for himself, and the city celebrates that.

The first time I drove through Dodge City was in a truck. I happened upon a pull-over next to a huge cattleyard, so I stopped and took some pictures. Seemed to me, both while I was there and after I drove past the bypass, that there was nothing much to see in Dodge except a fancy town sign, that cattleyard, and a bunch of cattle-carriers filling the lot of a local truckstop which, at the time, served large, locally grown steaks. But later, I had another chance to go through town and discovered I'd been deceived. There's a whole, thriving, modern town to be found, not to mention a tourist trap around the original Boot Hill! I couldn't stop then, but some day, I could come back. That day was today. (You know what I mean.)

Selling Ice to Eskimos

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Eskimos live in cold places. They have plenty of ice sitting around, and they can make more any time they want it. Wouldn't it be great, though, if we could sell them our ice? We can carve it out of the same places they get theirs, and then convince them that our ice is better than their ice so they'll buy it from us. The only problem I foresee is that they'll only be able to pay us in fish, and I don't think Walmart takes fish as a payment option for giant-screen TVs, though I could be wrong. Even if they do, I'm not sure what the exchange rate is.

But maybe we can do something equally preposterous. Maybe we can sell water to people who are already paying for a residential water system. We'll bottle it up and sell it for ridiculous prices.

Maybe you're wondering why people would buy our water when it would be so much cheaper and easier for them to simply drink water out of their faucet like they used to do even 10 years ago, or, if they don't like the impurities, why they don't buy a water filter and a reusable container, like a glass or a water bottle.

Simple.

Sunday Funnies 11-10-23

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Welcome back for our weekly summary of everything important that you can't just scroll down and read! Just eight days to Halloween; do you have your house decorated and your costume designed and your party scheduled? If not, you'd better get it done quick.

We've had a cold snap here in Florida this weekend. Last Friday for my morning walk, it was so cold I felt like my brain was freezing. Still made about 5 miles, but I was miserable doing it. Fortunately it's warming up a little, and yesterday's and today's mornings were slightly less cold, so I'm not worried about Monday.

There were an awful lot of stories I thought were important enough to share over on our associated Facebook page, which you should check out and hit that big LIKE button at the top. So many, in fact, that I felt there was getting to be a bit of information overload, so I didn't share everything I really wanted to. Here are the most important things which happened last week:

86% of Bailout Money Used for Executive Bonuses -  How many times do we have to fall for this before we figure out we're getting ripped off by the corps AND the congressmen voting in favor of these?

5 Conservative Economic Myths Occupy Wall St. Is Helping Bust - Amazing. Simply amazing.

Awake The State November 1st! - All 50 state capitals are going to experience demonstrations.

The Artful Dodgers - How those who most need to pay their taxes get away with paying none.

Wall Street’s Second Occupation: The Rise of the NYPD's Homeland Security State - I believe they had something like this in Germany in the early 1930's.

Janet Reid's Most Terrifying Contest Ever! - I managed to get my entry in third out of almost 200. No idea when we'll hear who won, but if you pester Jet enough, maybe you can convince her I should win.

How to Regain Our Democracy - Very simple solution.

Presidential Candidate Buddy Roemer Calls for Withdrawal From NAFTA, WTO - These are basically illegal treaties in which we give away what we have and get nothing in return. They gotta go. Roemer is the only candidate who wants to get money out of DC to end taxation without representation.

Judge Judy - Here's Who You Support With Taxes - She's far more patient with him than I would be.

Stimulus Money Used to Employ Foreign Guest Workers Instead of Americans - Are you sure this isn't treason?

That will definitely keep you busy today. Have a great Sunday!

The Church of the Almighty Dollar

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Lately you've heard a lot about the Occupy Wall Street Movement. The first thing you may have heard was that it was being suppressed by the major media outlets, who have zero obligation to report facts no matter how important they are. Then you started to hear that the protesters were a bunch of hippies who didn't know what they wanted, except to tax the rich into oblivion. But when the Movement reached your city, you found that you couldn't dismiss them so easily because not only were there a LOT of regular people among them, but they were coherent and made a whole lot more sense than the major media wanted you to believe.

What Americans want is simple: True separation of Church from State. We want the Church of the Almighty Dollar to be expelled from the process of law-making and law-enforcement.

Road trip 2 - A Moment of Silence for those We've Lost

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Not counting the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks, what is the worst act of terrorism committed within American borders? Maybe Waco comes to mind. Or the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Or the DC sniper. Those were terrible events, but the Oklahoma City bombing, which took place in 1995, is what I'm talking about.

As a truck driver, I've been through OKC many times, and been across the state of Oklahoma even more. The roads through the state are designed such that you almost can't pass through Oklahoma without also going through its capital.

There's a lot to see in these pictures; take your time as you look at them.

On the morning of April 19, 1995, a pair of soulless men filled a truck with fertilizer and other explosives. One of them drove it to the front of the Murrah Federal Building, a nine-story multipurpose high rise in the heart of the city. He parked the van, fuses already lit, and walked away. A few minutes later, at 9:02 AM, a large explosion devestated the building and the parking lot across the street. At least 168 people died, including 19 children in the daycare center, and 680 more were injured. Within a 16 block radius, 324 buildings were damaged and 86 cars were destroyed. The bomb had to be enormous to cause so much damage; it was equivalent to 5000 pounds of TNT, or 1/4 the power of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

Discount Cards

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Thank you for letting me scam you last week.

Scams are awesome, aren't they? I've got a few of them I'd like to tell you about, and then we can work together and do what's morally required of us: parting suckers from their money.

A great way to part suckers and their money is to make them feel like they're getting a huge discount on what you're selling. And for eons, the traditional route to doing so has been to inflate the price and quote that to the customer, then let him haggle you down. It has worked well in the open-air markets of the world for millennia. Americans haven't directly experienced the joy of haggling in quite some time outside of a car lot, but if you'd like to see how it works, you can easily take a trip to Mexico and give it a try. I got my first experience when I was briefly stationed in San Diego. A couple weekends, we went down to Tijuana.

Sunday Funnies 11-10-16

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A lot's happened this past week. First off, I found a nice intermediate step between the previous rendition of the site and the super-modern, user-reconfigurable version (which I really want you to have, just as soon as they enable the important stuff), and that is what you see now: nice lines and boxes and a very clean, professional look. I'm extremely happy with this, although it forgot to import all my keywords and meta tags; thank God I saved the code from the previous rendition! I've probably got 1000 keywords to help the search engines find the stuff you're looking for! The site should stay about the same for a while.

Second is that Biketoberfest is winding down today. There are a few things still going on, but come sunset, bikes will return to their normal level of ubiquity. Had wonderful weather for this extended weekend, and from the looks of my riding around, there were about as many people here as there usually are for my birthday party, aka Bike Week in March. (Bike Week always falls on my birthday, except, apparently, for next year.)

Third is that I checked out the new Occupy Daytona Beach group last week. Fifty people showed up last Monday for its first meeting, and over 100 showed up for yesterday's informational/rally/demonstration, which itself was part of a WORLDWIDE event taking place in almost 1000 cities.

As I said at the meeting, it takes a lot of courage to show up at these things. When you see the attrocities being committed in New York City against these people, such as a cop running over an observer with his motorcycle and then beating and arresting him, it makes you wonder for your own safety. When you have hypocritical retards like Ann Coulter - a woman who lauded Timothy McVeigh's terrorist attack on Oklahoma City (which you'll read about later this week) - are slinging hateful insults and telling regular people to commit irrational acts of violence, you have to wonder for your own safety. And when you even have various elected officials calling for violence and even murder against the protesters, it's almost enough to go back to being a sheep, awaiting your turn to be fleeced and slaughtered.

Road trip 1 - Who Shot JR

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Back in May, I told you I had something special coming up. This is it. I got to take a trip around the country with my dad and favorite nephew. Somehow we avoided killing each other or getting too much on each others' nerves, and got to see a lot of great stuff.

For my nephew it was all new; he'd never been west of the Mississippi. Everything was new for him, everything a sight unseen, a sight to remember.

For my dad, it was reliving an experience he'd had when he was about 6. Back when he was a little kid, before the interstates existed, his grandparents took him and his older sister out west to Yellowstone. It was a trip he's been itching to repeat for almost 60 years. Additionally, about 12 years ago, just before I got out of the navy, he took a trip out to San Diego, where I had been stationed a year or two before, to visit an aunt of his he hadn't seen in a long time. On his way back, he visited the Grand Canyon. (Then a few days after he got home, his aunt passed away.)

And for me, I've been driving a truck long enough that I've driven past a lot of very interesting things, but for one reason or another couldn't stop at all of them. I wanted to get a closer look at a lot of things I was forced to drive past.

You, dear reader, get to come along for the ride!

Is Change Good?

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Change for the sake of change is rarely good. It may be how Evolution works, but we as a society can't afford such luxuries. However, times change, and if we don't keep up with those changes, we stagnate and crumble. Even a brick wall needs to be remortared every once in a while to maintain its integrity.

When it comes to politics, there are two broad philosophies: keeping things as they are - Conservatism - and changing things - which goes by many names, such as Liberalism and Progressivism.

Historically speaking, the Conservatives are a more cohesive force than those wishing for change. So long as enough people are willing to put up with whatever the current circumstance is, change isn't needed. But circumstances change of their own accord, no matter how we might want to keep them the same, if for no other reason than because as we age, our needs change, and when they do, the number of people satisfied with the current situation decreases until change happens.

Sunday funnies - 11-10-9

Tweet .

Since starting up the Facebook attachment (which I just spoke about in the previous post), I've found it's very easy to just throw up interesting links. However, Facebook doesn't have a very good history function, nor a good search function, so when those very important posts fall too far down, they're pretty much lost to all who aren't internet archaeologists.

So I just now sez to myself, "Self," I sez, "why not preserve the best of them thar linkies up in here in this website?" That might be funnier if you can imagine me doing it in my Mr. Turner voice. If you've had the privilege to hear it.

But anyway, here are the best links of the week, not counting the links back to here.

Bombshell: DOJ Considering Elimination of ATF

What’s behind the scorn for the Wall Street protests? - Jesse Ventura (yes, that one) pointed this out.

TrainStation - A very rare find: a Facebook game worth playing.

Daily Show: Parks and Demonstration - John Stewart's take on the Wall Street demonstrations.

Ohio Pork Industry Hurt by Prison System Decision - Political Retardation strikes again.

Bank On It: They're Scared - More on the Occupy Wall Street movement, just released today.


Quite a collection there. Once you're done checking them all out, how about heading over to our new Facebook page and hitting the LIKE button for us? Click here to see it. Do it. Do it nooooooow.

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Good Numbers, Gooooood Numbers

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As you know, I added some Facebook love to the site. I then campaigned to get 1000 LIKEs. A lofty goal, no doubt, especially since I don't have even 1/3 that many FB friends, but sometimes if you shoot for the stars, you hit the moon. I did pretty good, considering, but the opportunity to set a record is gone.

I'd still appreciate a LIKE, if you don't mind taking a second to do it. The more LIKEs we get, the harder we'll try to be likeable. (In a manly, macho sort of way, not a toady, mealy sort of way.)

I also spent some time checking out some of the new ways available to display a blog. They've come up with an absolutely GORGEOUS front page, which I used briefly Friday, until I discovered that some critical functionality was missing and had to switch back. It's a shame, it was really awesome. Hopefully in the future they'll fix that and I can use it.

But there's some unmitigated good news, too. Not just that Sarah Palin has taken her misbegotten  pre-campaign donations and withdrawn from the Presidential race, but rather that the site's numbers are up big time!

Right lane allergy

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I have lived near major interstates pretty much all my life, especially my adult life. By this I mean an interstate highway which has 3 or more lanes per direction which is within 2 miles of my house. A good example of this is the Bohrman Expressway in northwest Indiana. I-80/94, the fastest non-toll road into Chicago, has had 3 lanes for as long as I can remember. (A few years ago, they added a fourth lane to it.)

In a place like northwest Indiana, where the traffic is thick and the exits are only a mile or two apart, or over in Chicago where it's considerably worse, I can see why people might develop an allergy to being in the right-most lane. That's where the entry and exit ramps are, and keeping out of that lane means you're not in anyone's way.

But here in Florida, on the stretch of I-95 that I live near where there are 3 lanes to travel in and the exits are few and far between, I still see people exhibiting this allergy.

Favorite Rip-offs

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Recently, some pretty ridiculous things have been assaulting me from the TV, from friends, and even my own family. I've shared a handful of them with you from time to time, but of late, it seems like there's a lot more than usual going on. It occurred to me that Snopes.com has a good thing going on: they expose fakes and the like, and they're pretty much the authority about that kind of thing. They've branded themselves well. I've always liked debunkers, which I suppose is why I have a lot of respect for Snopes, Mythbusters, and the Amazing Randy and Johnny Carson. Yep, I like Adam and Jaime for more than their ability to blow things sky high.

I came up with a great idea on how to rip off people while making them think I'm doing them a favor. Actually, I thought of a few ways, and I'll share them now and then. Today's idea has to do with on-line auctions.

Imagine for a moment that you wanted to run an auction website. How do you cut in on giants like Ebay? You have to come up with something different, of course. Like so...