Last Call For The Post Windows XP Era

The first major Microsoft Internet Explorer bug since the company announced the end of support for Windows XP was discovered, and no, if you still have Windows XP, Microsoft isn't going to fix it.

Microsoft Corp is rushing to fix a bug in its widely used Internet Explorer web browser after a computer security firm disclosed the flaw over the weekend, saying hackers have already exploited it in attacks on some U.S. companies.

PCs running Windows XP will not receive any updates fixing that bug when they are released, however, because Microsoft stopped supporting the 13-year-old operating system earlier this month. Security firms estimate that between 15 and 25 percent of the world's PCs still run Windows XP.

Microsoft disclosed on Saturday its plans to fix the bug in an advisory to its customers posted on its security website, which it said is present in Internet Explorer versions 6 to 11. Those versions dominate desktop browsing, accounting for 55 percent of the PC browser market, according to tech research firm NetMarketShare.

So cool, back of the napkin math (55% of users still use IE times 20% of users have XP still) is a little over 10% of the entire PCs in the world that will remain vulnerable to this major IE bug, ballpark.  Probably more than that as if you're still using XP, you're probably not using another browser besides IE, so let's call it 15%, or about one in six PC's on earth are going to remain vulnerable right now.  Vulnerable to what?

Microsoft said in the advisory that the vulnerability could allow a hacker to take complete control of an affected system, then do things such as viewing changing, or deleting data, installing malicious programs, or creating accounts that would give hackers full user rights.

And remember, this is a vulnerability that goes all the way back to IE version 6.  It's been around for several years, and it gives the keys to your PC to hackers.  If you're still using an XP PC, the time to upgrade is now.

It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Be This Scared

The NRA wants you to never forget that they have millions of members with millions of firearms.

Who's going to crush whom, indeed?  Take the NRA's "greatest victory", Georgia's new "guns everywhere" law.

Parents at a Forysth County park abruptly stopped a children's baseball game after growing suspicions of the behavior of a man carrying a gun in a waist holster Tuesday night.

"He's just walking around [saying] 'See my gun? Look, I got a gun and there's nothing you can do about it.' He knew he was frightening people. He knew exactly what he was doing," said parent Karen Rabb.

Rabb told Channel 2’s Tom Regan the parents grew so alarmed that they brought the game to a halt when the man declined a request that he leave a parking lot overlooking the baseball field.

“He scared people to the point where we stopped the game, took the kids out of the dugout and behind the dugout, and kind of hunkered down,” Rabb said.

Park users flooded 911 with 22 calls about the man. Forysth County deputies questioned the man, and found that he had a permit for the handgun. Authorities said since the man made no verbal threats or gestures, they could neither arrest him nor ask him to leave the park.

Congratulations again on your new Wild West laws, Georgia.  The millions of NRA members and the Republicans that serve them got this law passed to give that fellow the right to do exactly what he did.  Not anything you can do about it, because you demanded that be legal.

Another parent questioned what point the man was trying to prove.

"Why would anyone be walking around a public park, with a lot of children and parents and people here playing baseball, and he's walking around with a gun? I don't think the parents would have been nervous had he just had the gun in his holster and was just watching the game," said parent Paris Horton.

Rabb's 6-year-old son Ethan was playing at the time and later expressed concern to his mother.

"When I was reading my son's story last night, he turned to me and said 'Mommy, did that man want to kill me?'" said Rabb.

Feel safer yet, parents?  The solution of course is next time for all these scared parents to bring their guns to the park, right?  So they can feel safe.  And soon, everybody will have guns, and everybody will feel safe, because Second Amendment.  And the kids will learn that to be safe, you have to have a gun. 

And then they will learn that guns "solve problems".  Original intent of the founders, because FREEDOM.

Of Sterling Character

Just another reminder that racism still exists in 2014, this time from long-time troublemaker and dirty old man Donald Sterling, owner of the NBA's LA Clippers.  Deadspin is all over this story:

We all knew that Donald Sterling was a racist and an overall horrible human being. So TMZ's lurid audio of the Los Angeles Clippers owner enraged about his girlfriend taking photos with black people shouldn't really surprise you if you've been paying any attention. And yet, the audio is shocking—maybe because it's 2014, and this man is still allowed to own an NBA team. 

Still allowed.  Sterling has owned the Clippers since 1981 and has been a cancer in the NBA ever since.

According to then-GM Paul Phipps, during an airport meeting with Rollie Massimino—a potential candidate to replace the fired Paul Silas as head coach—Donald Sterling asked the Villanova coach: "I wanna know why you think you can coach these niggers."

Our latest chapter in Donald Sterling Is a Racist comes courtesy of Jeff Pearlman. In interviews with Phipps for a book about the NBA in the 80s, Pearlman learned that Massimino later told Phipps he would be passing on the job in an angry early-morning phone call.

Phipps, half asleep, sat up on his bed and asked what went wrong. “Here’s this guy,” Massimino said, “and he has this blonde bimbo with him, they have a bottle of champagne, they’re tanked. And Don looks at me and he says, ‘I wanna know why you think you can coach these niggers.’”

Massimino told Phipps he began screaming at Sterling and swore he’d rather die than become coach of the Clippers. “That,” said Phipps, “was life with Donald Sterling.”

Things worked out just fine for Massimino, though.

 Now it seems a fight with his girlfriend (Sterling is married, btw) has prompted the release of this 15 minute highlight reel of Sterling's most awesome, racist rants after the jump.

Another Milepost On The Road To Oblivion

Paul Waldman at the American Prospect recounts the ridiculous failure of a week the GOP had.

Try to relax; today's meme is all about discomfort. And there's no one feeling more of it than Republicans, who were hit yesterday with the rhetorical stylings of their erstwhile hero Cliven Bundy—Nevada rancher, defier of laws, and racial philosopher. The Republican Party's chief spokesperson, for instance, can't figure out why anyone would associate Bundy with the GOP. "The issue with Cliven Bundy has absolutely nothing to do with his party, zero," he said. After all, it's not like the GOP's chief organ in the media had been giving the guy blanket coverage all the while Republican politicians were praising his crusade. I mean, c'mon.

Republicans are also being made uncomfortable by their own candidates, who haven't all gotten the message on the "outreach" the party is supposed to be doing. Here's one who has proposed an effort to round up and deport every undocumented immigrant in the country, which he calls, no kidding, "Operation Wetback." Here's one who said it was an "abominable idolatry" when wives love their children more than their husbands, arguing that that's what causes divorces most of the time. He added that in the "vast preponderance" of situations where men are adulterous, women are to blame because they have showered too much emotion on their children instead of their husbands. And here's one who endorsed cockfighting.

And none of this will matter in the least to Republican voters come Election Day, who will to a person say "But none of these people are like *my* Representative or Senator, because they're a good person, and I'm still going to vote for them in November."

They will still come out and vote Republican just to prove to the dirty effin hippies that their guy is not an animal hater like Matt Bevin running for Mitch McConnell's seat or not a bigot like Drew Turiano running for Steve Daines's House seat in Montana or not a homophobe like Det Fowler running for Huckleberry Graham's seat and CERTAINLY not ANYTHING like that Cliven Bundy fellow.

There is literally nothing that the GOP can do that will make Republicans stop voting for them.  There's a long list of things that will make Democrats stay home, however.  2010 proved that.