RNL Bio is a research and cloning facility who’s verticle market is cloning animals. More specifically cloning dogs. Among the staff, Hwang Woo-suk, who had been originally ostricised for embezzelment and one of the leaders in animal cloning technology.

The process was aparently a success and they cloned 5 puppies from the remains of the departed “Booger” dog. This was all over the news and pictures of Bernann McKinney, the lady in this story, was plastered all over the airways. This is where it gets WEIRD, as if this wasn’t already the screen play for an already nuts story.

Reporters and others started noticing a remarkable similarity with Bernann McKinney and Joyce McKinney. Joyce McKinney was a former beauty queen and Mrs Wyoming (1972), gained infamy when she kidnapping a Morman Missionary, Kirk Anderson, in 1977.

Kirk and Joyce had a brief relationship which ended with Joyce having a miscarrage. Upon advise from religious leaders, Kirk decided to end the relationship and went into hiding in Ewell in Surrrey a district of UK.

Joyce tracked him down using private detectives and in 1977, she kidnapped him at the Ewell’s Church of the Latter Day Saints. She took him to a cottage in Okenhampton and chained him to bed. For days she tried to persuade him to marry her and allegedly “raped” him. She was obsessed with being married to him and carrying his children. After days of tourture, he promised to marry her upon which time he was released and escaped to the police.

Joyce was arrested days later and a circus trial ensued. Joyce then managed to skip bail and escaped to Canada then later was arrested in Atlanta, Georgia where she was posing as a nun. This was due to her posing topless in magazines; capitalizing on her recent notoriety for the kidnapping events. Again she skipped bail. She was caught again in 1984 where it was aparent she was going to try to kidnap Kirk again in Salt Lake City. Again, she skipped bail and court, but the charges were dropped.

The links between Joyce and Bernann McKinney, come, not only in the striking similarities of looks, but also because of an attack by a dog which Joyce was a victim of. She was attacked and received serious injuries and her dog, “Hamburger” fended off the attacker. Her injuries left her confined to a wheelchair and received other quite extensive injuries to her hands and arm.

Well so now recently, she is being sought on charges for convincing a minor to commit aggravated burglary in 2005. The funds of which were going to be used to fund a horse’s wooden leg! WTF

Just so you don’t think I am making this up, here are the articles and the links I got this from:

Dead dog’s owner creates FIVE cloned puppies of her beloved pet

A cloned dog, a Mormon in mink-lined handcuffs and a tantalising mystery

Dog cloner Joyce McKinney sought over burglary to fund horse’s wooden leg

I don’t think there is any question this is one crazy lady!

Google Notifier for Mac OS X is really handy. Having had it, I rarely miss emails to my Gmail account as it is really quick to see when a message comes in and if I need to address it immediately. However, this program connects to Gmail and authenticates over plain txt through HTTP. It also gets any emails messages over the same unencrypted method, whereby it pops up a nice growl notification of the email that was just delivered.

Horrified yet again at being let down by an application I love, I did some digging and found you can actually secure this. There is no option in the application … common devs WTF! However, you can edit the plist file manually and enable a variable to switch to HTTPS. Here is how you do it in Mac OS X:

• Double click “Macintosh HD” (or whatever your hard drive is called)
• Click your username under “Places” (we are navigating to your user’s home directory)
• Double click “Library” under your home directory
• Double click “Preferences”
• Find the file “com.google.GmailNotifier.plist” in this location and double click it, it should open in a program called “Property List Editor” which is a plist editor for this particular kind of file
• You will see a “Root” under the “Property List”, expand it (click the arrow next to Root) so you see all the “Child” variables to “Root”
• Highlight “Root” then click “New Child” then enter the name “SecureAlways” (without the double quotes)
• Make sure the “Class” section for “SecureAlways” says “String”, if not, use the pull down to change it as such
• Enter in for the value section of “SecureAlways” “1″ (without the double quotes)
• Quit and click “Save” when prompted
• If open, you will need to turn off, then turn back on the application

Now after having monitored my traffic, the entire application runs through HTTPS. I don’t understand you devs putting in these variables in, having the code to handle it, and then not having the option available in the application preferences! Common guys give us the warm fuzzy of knowing we are safe and secure!

This has probably been shown a ton through forums and news articles but I wanted to make sure to reemphasize the need for security with Gmail. Gmail is great, there is no doubt about it, and I love and use it every day. Though you need to be aware that, while logging into the interface at Gmail’s website initially starts with SSL and HTTPS authentication for the password, you are immediately dropped out to a plain text HTTP session during your time logged in.

After the initial login, secured, the system uses a session based tracking method for making sure you are … who you say you are. This is also so you don’t have to keep entering your password for every click in the interface. While on the surface it seems reasonable to only need security logging in since the password itself is secure. However, anyone sniffing your network traffic can grab the session based data in transit as it isn’t encrypted. It is then trivial for an attacker to use your session data and enter your account without authentication. From there, they can read your mail and wreck all kinds of havoc on your account.

This is why it is important to setup HTTPS when using Gmail. Once logged into Gmail:

• Go to Settings
• Next to “Browser connection”, click the radio button next to “Always use https”
• Click “Save Changes” below
• Log out then log back in

This will now make your entire session through secured HTTPS transmissions, from the password exchange to the session exchange.

I have come to love Twitterrific and while realizing some security issues I was having with Google’s Gmail Notifier, I uncovered yet another security concern. It appears that Twitterrific does not connect to the Twitter service via HTTPS, and rather, connects via HTTP and authenticates over plain text! WTF IS THIS!

I looked all through preferences just to make sure I didn’t miss somewhere, but, nope, no option to enable SSL or encrypted logins. I can understand downloading updates after an initial encrypted login is made for overhead on Twitter, but the clear text HTTP post for passwords is crazy! I had to do some digging and here I found how to correct this via the command line in Mac OS X:

defaults write com.iconfactory.Twitterrific protocol -string “https://”

I did one better and found a way to do it, “graphically” for those too afraid to mess with the command line in Mac OS X. It essentially does the same thing as the command line above. Here is how:

• Double click “Macintosh HD” (or whatever your hard drive is called)
• Click your username under “Places” (we are navigating to your user’s home directory)
• Double click “Library” under your home directory
• Double click “Preferences”
• Find the file “com.iconfactory.Twitterrific.plist” in this location and double click it, it should open in a program called “Property List Editor” which is a plist editor for this particular kind of file
• You will see a “Root” under the “Property List”, expand it (click the arrow next to Root) so you see all the “Child” variables to “Root”
• Highlight “Root” then click “New Child” then enter the name “protocol” (without the double quotes)
• Make sure the “Class” section for “protocol” says “String”, if not, use the pull down to change it as such
• Enter in for the value section of “protocol” “https://” (without the double quotes)
• Quit and click “Save” when prompted

When you restart Twitterrific, it will start connecting via HTTPS.

I don’t get why the developers put this in the plist if they didn’t at some point expect to have that functionality used. If that was the case what is with the lack of an option in the configuration area for this tool? At any rate, pissed off as I am that it has been doing this for so long, but now its secure, I guess I am now going to have to audit all my passwords again … sigh.

Oh and a major plug to the makers of Little Snitch, Objective Development! You can pick up this software here. Without that program, I probably would never have suspected such a glaring security issue was occurring. Pretty handy little program.

I hope this isn’t the case with the iPhone version of Twitterrific. I don’t like having to check behind every damn tool or application I use. In this day, it is simply inexcusable to not think about security first in your application development.

**** Update ****

Okay so I guess I am an idiot for not reading the “Read Me” file in the Twitterific download. It states:

protocol -string “http://” Allows Twitterrific to be configured for other protocols, such as “https://”.

Which is basically what I outlined above. I received an update from their support stating that the next version will have this by default for both clients, Mac and iPhone. So hopefully that comes very soon! Good work guys!

Apparently in Helena-West Helena, Arkansas a recent gang turf war has enacted drastic measures by the Mayor James Valley. They have enacted a 24-hour non-stop curfew. If you don’t have a valid reason for being outside, you go to jail. That means that the police have no need for probable cause and everyone is subject to search and investigation. The ACLU submitted a statement saying that the mayor has violated first, fourth, and fourteenth amendment.

Here is a news broadcast of the event:

Here is another news broadcast of the event:

OMG Please think of the children!

I love how when the cards are down, people are all but willing to give up their God given rights like the lady in the video approving the loss of her rights:

I commend the Helena-West Helena Police Department!

Now don’t get me wrong, I think its messed up the amount of crime that is going down there. The guy interviewed, Richard Robinson, hit the nail on the head, the way in which the local government there is handling it is completely wrong.

I love it when the mayor gives classic sound bites like:

This turf belongs to the tax payer citizens, not to the drug dealers and the hustlers. And we gonna pop them in the head!

Wow, how eloquent. You cant make this stuff up. The mayor is totally off his rocker, here is another article where:

… the mayor of an Arkansas community decides the way to deal with pet overpopulation is to take the pound dogs out into a national forest and “set them free”. -mylifewiththecritters.blogspot.com

Simply amazing that he is still in office.

So Holy crap man, this movie was totally made for me. What is funny about skating? Nothing much, but add the monkey modifier and here ya go. Monkeys really freaking skating on the freaking ice, ZOMFG:

Ice-Skating Monkeys

That is prally the most BAD-ASS movie I have EVER seen!

Crazy Badminton - More amazing video clips are a click away

I mean holy crap! Is this crazy or what? I am afraid to say this, but I am honestly pumped up about watching it now after having seen this.