KINGSQUEAK.ORG & KC2RGW.COM

So when people with relatively sane objectivity wind up strapping bombs on themselves and taking hostages, what does that say?

This is the site of the Discovery building hostage taker….frankly he’s not wrong on most of this.

My Demands.

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Some light reading for a Monday.

What collapsing empire looks like – Glenn Greenwald – Salon.com.

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So today I tried to pay for goods using PayPal as I’ve done since 2001. My transaction was refused. It turns out there is a cumulative lifetime limit of $10k for using PayPal via a credit card. Who knew?

I use PayPal so that there is a proxy between my information and various vendors on line. The entire point is to have the CC vendor AND PayPal as levers should any issues arise.

PayPal wants me to submit my ACH routing information for my checking or savings account in order to become ‘verified’ and in turn, lift this arbitrary lifetime limit. Let me explain why I’m even writing this. There is NO way I’m submitting my ACH account information to an online vendor or anyone at all…period.

Years ago, I got into a dispute with a very disreputable RIM Blackberry CDPD based web access company. Basically a pager company that had web browsing on the original 957 Blackberry. I disputed the service with them, it was lousy and they basically told me to go scratch. I cancelled my account with them.

One mistake; I had set up a monthly auto debit from my checking account to make the bill pay easier. This company proceeded to file withdrawals from my account $40 at a time, attempting to basically run my account up to about $550 for the cost of the Blackberry. I’d told them I’d send it back, but they didn’t want it back. I never authorized them to charge me for it, but they went ahead pillaging my account anyway.

I only realized it happened (pre-internet banking) because they overdrafted my account and the bank put me into collections over a $150 or so overdraft…never even called me to ask about it. Once I caught up to the whole mess, the bank refused to do anything at all to get my money back and I wound up having to pay them all sorts of penalties on top of losing the money itself.

This made me wonder about the ACH system and I did some research into it. Years later I met a US Treasury agent and he explained the entire thing to me.

The ACH system (on the bottom of a check, the account number and routing number) that places like Telecheck or now, many online vendors use to debit your account (i.e. to PULL funds FROM your account vs you PUSHING funds TO them) is a very murky system. There is no authentication on this system. All someone has to do is actually posess your account number and the routing number and they can make a withdrawal. They don’t even need to know your name or any other bits of identity, they simply just need your two numbers. Posession of these numbers implies consent for account access. This is _incredible_ and most people are not aware of this.

There is a tiny bit of protection on this system. Cases/complaints are handled by the Secret Service. However there is a tiny catch. The minimum dollar amount (I may be off a bit, but it’s still a ludicrously high number) for them to even take a complaint is $300,000.00. Can you guess what the number one most common dollar amount is for fraud on this system? Yup, $299,999.99.

This means that if you have $100k in your savings account, it’s completely fair game for anyone who gains access to your account. Nobody will even attempt to track this fraud down and the bank will not make good on fraud via the fed wire system.

The moral of this story is simply

DO NOT EVER GIVE YOUR ACH ROUTING INFO to anyone, EVER.

If you want to configure bill pay etc, only configure it when you PUSH funds TO the vendor. Never allow an automated debit of any sort really as you are consenting to that party to have access to your account. At least with a normal credit card, you have some recourse if you have fraud along these lines. With your checking and savings account via the Fed wire system, you have NONE.

This will be my last PayPal transaction after 9 years of using them without any issues at all. What a pain in the ass this will be.

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Use this link at SDX, will save you time later for making 2.1 feel like home.

SDX-Developers Official Android DE03 (2.1)

I’ve got it all installed with all my own tweaks, so far so good. Will know in a day or so how it all shakes out compared to the leaked pre-release versions.

** So far, I’m seeing better wi-fi lock and faster GPS lock, noticeable so far.

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Somehow I’ve avoided writing this, but boredom has finally gotten the better of me and I decided I would outline my stance on the healthcare situation as it is.

Our leadership globally in medical technology is driven in today’s context by some very simple mechanisms. Greed and ego. The top practitioners are driven by their own egos and their own desire for the high salaries that can be attained in the medical field. If you take away all ability for doctors to make the living that attracted them to the field, they will (and already are) leave the field to move on to another more profitable venture. For the number of years, effort and expense it takes to get through medical school, it simply will not pay to bother.

Currently, the state of the government meddling in the medical coverage arena already drives many practitioners away from giving care to those who most need it. The governmental fraud that is practiced against the physicians is incredible. Essentially under our current system, a doctor that is foolhardy enough to give care to individuals on government assistance will be fleeced when it comes to recovering their expenses. The government essentially steals the services of the physicians who remain in the service of patients on assistance. This has obviously drastically dropped the level of quality in choice of practitioners for those on assistance.

Rather than having a fair and equitable system in place to compensate physicians for their time and services, the government reaches deep into their pockets and steals from them in return for the favor of public service.

When the government finally puts all of the middle class on the dole, the level of care for all of ‘us’ will be dropped to the current levels of free clinic care. So not only will the level of care that the average American receives drop drastically, but the insane burden that will be placed on the clinic system will destroy it. My prediction is there will be an immediate flight from the system by the few remaining physicians that are currently willing to participate. We will be left with the worst of the worst. Physicians with training so poor that they cannot create a specialized practice of their own. Physicians that are so undesirable that they cannot attain a staff position in a hospital.

Currently most of us have a benefits package through our employers. Over the last three years alone my own contribution has been increased by several hundred dollars per month. The burden on our employers has been increased exponentially as well. So I am already inside-out on my salary simply due to healthcare coverage increases that weren’t offset by wage increases. Add to that the ever increasing tax burden for living in the kingdom that NJ has become and the pool of money at the end of the month is nearly dried up.

Once the Marxist social medicine system is slammed down on our society, all of our employers will instantly drop coverage for their employees. If there is no reason for them to continue to provide coverage as an incentive for employment, you can believe they will immediately stop their contributions. Do you all think for one second that your employer will then turn around and give YOU that money? No way, it will instantly be absorbed by their bottom line. That leaves us all stuck in the lines at the clinics….unless.

Once we have all been banished to the local free clinics for care, people will realize that going into these drug infested neighborhoods is a dangerous proposition for our families. It is plainly unsafe. At the very least we will be subject to having our vehicles vandalized and very likely much more serious crimes. To avoid this, we will need to scramble and attain our own private insurance coverage so that we can maintain the level of healthcare to which we have been accustomed.

Guess what? The cost of care, particularly when you have the magic money disappearing machine of our federal government handling it, will be astronomical. So all of the cost we currently carry and much more will still have to be paid into the kitty. In order to attain our ‘good old’ level of coverage, we will all now have to pay TWICE. Once in the insane tax burden that is levied to pay for the dole and again for our own private coverage.

Currently, if the tax burden goes up another $500 per month, I will be left at a zero balance. That will leave me with no spare money to get my own insurance coverage. That will place my family and me in line with undocumented criminals and their broods in the most crime ridden, crack infested areas possible just to get basic medical care.

The level of care will be far inferior to what we are used to now thereby lowering quality of life and even life expectancy. People in general will be less inclined to pursue even basic wellness care lest they have to be exposed to the hoardes of undocumented and other criminals in the public clinics.

This is what the new reality will be. Our government has not once in recent history initiated any program on time, on budget and delivering what was promised. There will be no possible way that they handle healthcare in even a close approximation of what they represent the plan to be.

On the technology side, the only thing that funds and motivates research is profit. Our government does relatively nothing at all to advance medical or any other health and welfare related scientific research, so that burden is left to the private sector. Once you have the government controlling the entirety of the healthcare system, there will be no more profit motive for all of the private sector businesses that currently support the research needed to advance medical technology. The only money that will flow is into projects related to national security or defense.

There will be no reason at all for the government to find a cure for more common ailments. If they reduce their own costs with a cure, they will in turn reduce their own revenue flow. Our government has never in recent history done anything to reduce its source of revenue….our taxes. Sure they may rearrange the accounting, but in the end, the numbers just continue to increase. It is against the very foundation of the state of our current system. It is not in the best interests of the system itself to self-destruct or limit its growth.

The utter collapse of the domestic healthcare sector, the pharmaceutical companies and all of their related technology and research branches is nearly guaranteed. This will further drive all engineering work off shore and further into the economies of other nations. The employment impact alone on our economy will be massive.

Why oh why a huge number of people think this is the way to go is just beyond my comprehension. Are you all willing to completely lower yourselves into the third world so a bunch of undocumented criminals can have a better life? Do you all really believe that our government is capable of doing anything that is truly in the interests of the people? Is it simply that the general public is this ignorant? I think so.

Utopia is that which is in contradiction with reality. — ALBERT CAMUS, Between Hell and Reason

The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money
— Alexis de Tocqueville

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So I’m sitting at lunch, and on the table is a flyer for a benefit 5k run. Nothing too unusual and I make my usual crack about doing the run while smoking…until I read what the charity was for.

It was a charity that promotes “pro-social behavior in our children”. I went on to read that the primary mission for this group is to essentially squash any creative spirit in children and teach them how to conform to what their group sees as ‘acceptable behavior’. A truly disgusting premise.

What is going through people’s minds with this concept? We, on a grand scale are designing educational systems and media agendas to teach children to essentially keep their heads down and not to stand out from the herd.

This began years ago with the pro-socialist political agenda I had to suffer through as early as the 80′s in public schools. Things like “US History” were used to disguise various Marxist and Socialist agendas with revisionist concepts of the actual historical facts. It has now metamorphosed into this anti-creativity agenda designed to pretty much break the spirit of any creative personalities or squash any self image for those who are natural achievers or free thinkers.

Things have degenerated to the point where score keeping in any sort of intramural events is prohibited because the psyche of the losing team might be harmed by the thought that they have failed. If students aren’t all wearing the same uniform or listening to the same music, they are now profiled as though they are terrorists. We are churning out a raft of non-thinkers, afraid to express themselves for fear they may stand out from the herd and be ridiculed.

Those who ‘succeed’ in the new plan, will be zeros when it comes to any contribution to our society. We are raising a destiny of failure and self-loathing mediocrity with these methods. People will be living lives, hating themselves because they are not mediocre enough to fit in, rather than realizing that they are the ones the herd should be following.

We are stifling innovation with this system and the way our current domestic economy is heading, the only thing we have left to bank on is the very innovative spirit that we are programming out of people.

A little light reading…now WAKE UP!

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Fridays are always good.  Hopefully the weather isn’t too awful this weekend.

I’ll be poking about on Saturday doing the charity thing and volunteering some time for event support forThe MS170 charity bike ride. I mostly sit around and smoke as it’s exhausting watching so many people exercise at once.

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Heh, well not so funny having to fix it, but sorry for the spam I pushed out there briefly. A plugin for WordPress called Twitter Poster masks spamming with all sorts of nonsensical ‘opt out’ check boxes that don’t work and hidden code in base64 format.

Amazing how unethical people can be.

So avoid using Twitter Poster with WordPress.

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Excellent start to the Friday.

Projects with seemingly little organization. Equipment that magically appears without any back story on it.

Tracked back and I find it is process FAIL.

It must be an inside out Friday….again.

Hooray weekend.

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Playing with WordPress plugins…is this thing on?

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