Update: I received the following reply from Dion Hulse speaking on behalf of the WordPress project in response to my email to security@wordpress.org. He points out what should have been obvious to me: the malware is probably probing for details about the database schema in hopes of crafting SQL injection attacks. The 'pass' and 'p2' parameters have never been used, nor have any effect, on the maint/repair.php script. It's possible that these could be used by a plugin though.

I put “The Last Brickmaker in America” in my Netflix queue solely because it starred Sidney Poitier. If you haven’t seen “To Sir, with Love”, “In the Heat of the Night”, and “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” you really should do so. Those were filmed when Mr. Poitier was at his peak and are amazing films. Especially the last one which is set in the 1960’s and involves an interracial romance that has both sets of parents initially dead set against the pending marriage.

The title of this post is from Daily Kos where Black Max points out that the newspaper’s answer contains No snark, no smartassery. This is one of the finest responses I’ve ever seen to this kind of question. I encourage you to read the article by Taylor Batten. Here are a couple of the answers that resonated especially strongly with me: We believe in consistency, so if you are going to drug-test recipients of public assistance, drug-test them all, including the corporate chieftains who are the biggest beneficiaries.

Once in a great while I see a novel piece of malware. Novel in the sense that it is particularly stupid in its behavior and tells us the author is an egotistical asshole. This week it is malware written by someone who can’t resist announcing in big bold letters that they are up to no good. Specifically, the malware makes HTTP attacks with the first request being “GET /Ringing.at.your.dorbell! HTTP/1.0“. Yes, that’s “dorbell” not “doorbell”.

Check out this story about Adam Miller. View post on imgur.com Apparently Mr. Miller believes he is Jesus Christ. If he can prove he is capable of healing any of the illnesses or injuries he claims to be able to cure I’ll eat my hat and agree he should win his libel suit against Stephanie Guttormson. There has never been a documented case of faith healing. There have been a huge number of self proclaimed faith healers proven to be committing fraud.

There is a myth in America that only people motivated by religion (specifically Christianity) do good works; i.e., help other people. Which is why I volunteer for as many philanthropic activities scheduled by the Atheist Community of San Jose as I can. This past Sunday I and three fellow ACSJ members helped improve the home of a 84 year old woman in our community. Most of the other volunteers on this project were there representing the Kiwanis.

I’ve been seeing numerous SSH attacks from GoDaddy owned networks (domain “secureserver.net”) for the past two days. I’ve sent an email to abuse@godaddy.com for each of those twenty attacks. I haven’t received as much as an auto-reply acknowledging my attack reports. Most hosting service providers at least pay lip service to reports of attacks from their networks. But not GoDaddy. Given their lengthy history (going back several years) of incompetence and malfeasance (see this article for a recent example) I conclude it is time to impose the Usenet Death Penalty on GoDaddy.

I actually watch very little television. I prefer seeing movies in a theatre or reading a book. But when the HBO.now service became available to Apple TV owners I couldn’t resist subscribing because I really wanted to watch the documentary “Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief”. This was directed by Alex Gibney who also directed “Taxi to the Dark Side”. Which is another must-see film about the torture practices of the United States in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks in 2001.

Today I received a fund-raising email from Truthout.org. A news source that generally champions progressive causes. I’ve given them money in the past but will not give them another penny until they agree that this is wrong and stupid: I became a mother last year. One of the best moments of my life was immediately followed by new worries. For example, genetically modified organisms were never really on my radar when I was just feeding myself.

Google “deomi sexism bible” and you’ll find a huge number of right-wing news sites and blogs expressing horror that the Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute (DEOMI), a group within the US Department of Defense (DOD), has a course on sexism that points out the self-evidently true fact that the Bible, US Declaration of Independence, and US Constitution all allowed, if not outright sanctioned, treating women as second-class citizens. Not surprisingly many of the blogs I read also used rhetoric consistent with the MRA (mens rights advocacy) movement.