beware the identity phishers

I received an email last night that was supposedly from paypal. Oddly enough, it wasn't to my primary email account, but to an older account I had never used with paypal. But for that they might have got me. It's pretty slick looking, but it still had a flaw that gave it away. Here's the email the way it appeared in Thunderbird (click for larger view):



Note that moving the cursor arrow over the link makes the destination url appear at the bottom of the screen. The first part of the hidden url has a Portugese url suffix! I checked with paypal, they don't HAVE a paypal localized site in Portugal.

Had I fallen for their ruse, I'd have been directed to a fake paypal site, where I'd reveal my paypal password when I attempted to login. Here's a lesson, stricter Judges and longer prison sentences keep these dickwads off the stre- er, I mean, never ever goto paypal without typing in the url yourself!.

Here's a legitimate email from paypal. They didn't even use their own logo in this instance.

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When I think of people stealing from me, I feel deep rumblings of rage, burried under a lifetime of self control and learned civilized behavior. If I were an uncivilized barbarian, I'd have their guts perforated with a rusty pitchfork.

f*ckers.

Canadians Try Smoking out Talibans hiding in Hemp Fields...

I've been following many of the unofficial accounts on the net of our Canadian troops in Afghanistan for a while now. It's amazing what doesn't get into the midstream media.

It Seems the Taliban's terrorists have taken to hiding in Afghanistan's lush 10- foot high Marijuanna fields. Seems that at this time of year they're quite green and ...FIREPROOF.
So the Canadian's do what seems obvious: they try to light the shit up and smoke out the enemy. General Rick Hillier, Canada's chief of Defense Staff admitted earlier this week that neither Diesel nor white phosphorus could do more than get a few brown plants on the edges smoking. Some of the soldiers downwind apparently suffered some "ill effects" and they had to give up on that particular course of action. (check this link for AFP photo)

Should have tried Napalm from B52s or something.(wav file)

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note: Ok, so the comic doesn't quite fit the story, but I bought Terry Mosher's last Aislin treasury just for this one. No disrespect is intended towards the huge majority of CF Personel in Afghanistan who passed the drug tests with flying colors. The comic itself dates back to a 2004 issue of the Montreal Gazette.

YouTube gonna suck now? - Thanks for nuthin Google.

I don't know what was on the video that was pulled from youtube, and I suppose I'll never know now. I had hoped that Google wouldn't f*ckup a good thing when they took over youtube, but I guess that's expecting too much. I listened Friday to an radio interview about the takeover and apparently 60% of the material on youtube contained copywrited elements. Much of it allowed you to scan (what the poster thought was) some of the best moments on tv etc. without having to sit through a whole damned production.

It was quick, easy, and convenient.

No more. Keep watching dear reader, in the coming weeks that little red message will appear more and more often as the big corporate hacks and their bloodsucking lawyers begin squeezing out more and more of the stuff that made youtube interesting and fun to visit.

It's probable that youtube was set to make some money from having the heavy internet traffic their site generated. But the people who posted there, and the millions who enjoyed their clips weren't getting any.

This isn't a rant against copyrights. But rather against those small minded greedy lawyers and corporate types, and the unique way they inspire a grasping grubbing attitude that somewhere, someone might be enjoying something. ...and that they might possibly be forced to pay for it.

This one is worthy of OOK the Librarian.

As my blog entries go this is about as juvenile as it gets. I found this the other day at UserFriendly. Google search for PUBIC LIBRARY. I can't believe how many public libraries can't spell...

Darrell Anderson revisited

I was told today I was too hard on that Anderson dickhead. Too bad.

Oathbreaking deserter turns himself in

Lookit this asshole. Wears his dishonor on his shirt.
This is Darrell Anderson, who joined the U.S. military to get a college educashun. Then the war in Iraq started and he was wounded by by a roadside IED.
That convinced him to desert to Canada. I'd tell you to kick im in the nads if you meet him on a Canadian street, but he turned himself in today, after chickenshit authorities promised not to charge him.

Oh well. Good riddance. If he'd have stayed here in Canada the next Liberal Government probably would have made him Governer General.

Putting it in Perspective

Browsing "The People's Cube" when I found this bit of humor:

Read the article, there's also a fictional quote from a letter from a European monarch (who refused to come to Byzantium's aid) that also made me smile sadly:

"We must avoid everything that increases tension between people or religions," said the King of France in an open letter to Manuel II (cc the Ottoman Court). "Islam is a religion of peace, and there is a need to be on constant alert against marginal provocations that are meant to turn this issue into a global crisis."

It's funny because it rings true in a way that the Politically Correct could never recognize. The Pope points out the unreasonability of people who claim "I believe in God, therefore I plant car-bombs in public places," and Islam goes ape-shit.

I notice that this website had a link to a video they'd produced illustrating what they thought was the proper context for the Holy Father's statements. It's been pulled. I searched youtube for it, but it doesnt' come up anymore.

I think the People's cube is a great little website every soccer mom and university prof should visit. It's full of ideas, tips, and interesting dictionary entries like this one:

Hezbollization

(noun) A process whereby evil murderous thugs are turned into everyday heroes by an overzealous mainstream media. Hezbollize (verb) Assign great social importance to gangsters, treat them as celebrities (Hez-boll-ized, Hez-boll-iz-ing, Hez-boll-iz-es)
Example 1: "Cross burnings bring warmth and comfort to homes without central heating, as caring KKK activists distribute clean white clothing among impoverished kids."
Example 2: "Crips, Bloods, MS 13 organize daily after school programs, engage minotiry children in pharmacological economics and ballistics training."