The New Year's celebrations begin tonight...a little Dark Star Orchestra action at The Paramount.  Depending on the stupendousity of the set, I might just double-dip and blow off a low key NYE shindig and go again tomorrow night.  

Here they are performing "Eyes of The World" at Mountain Jam last year...one of the highs of my 2014 highs and lows.

NY Magazine is reporting that NYC police are engaging in a work stoppage because their feelings have been so badly hurt by people who think the cops first response to seeing a person of color, which seems to be shoot them, is wrong.

US cybersecurity experts say they have solid evidence that a former employee helped hack Sony Pictures Entertainment's computer system -- and that it was not masterminded by North Korean cyberterrorists.
One leading cybersecurity firm, Norse Corp., said Monday it has narrowed its list of suspects to a group of six people -- including at least one Sony veteran with the necessary technical background to carry out the attack, according to reports.
The investigation of the Sony hacking by the private companies stands in stark contrast to the finding of the FBI, which said Dec. 19 its probe traced the hacking -- which ended up foiling the planned wide release of the Hollywood studio's "The Interview" -- to North Korea.
Kurt Stammberger, senior vice president at Norse, said he used Sony's leaked human-resources documents and cross-referenced the data with communications on hacker chat rooms and its own network of Web sensors to determine it was not North Korea behind the hack.
"When the FBI made this announcement, just a few days after the attack was made public, it raised eyebrows in the community because it's hard to do that kind of an attribution that quickly -- it's almost unheard of," Stammberger told Bloomberg News in a telephone interview from San Francisco.
"All the leads that we did turn up that had a Korean connection turned out to be dead ends," he said.

This is a temper tantrum worthy of spoiled brats.

But maybe the work stoppage will result in citizenry being on their best behaviour demonstrating the need for fewer spoiled brats policing the streets.

For weeks we were told that 8 or 9 black witnesses backed Darren Wilson's story.

Can anyone identify those witnesses on this chart or in the report???

Now, if you want to say that supporting the police means that I think they should have the right to use their gun to enforce any request they make of a citizen, regardless of the reason for that request, then no, I don't believe that.

Obviously, if someone won't drop the knife or other weapon, the cops have a right to shoot in defense of their own or others' lives, but that's not true of either of the current cases that are in the public eye

If after all the training and weaponry and support we give them, this is  what we've come to, just subjects that must do or die, then we really don't have anything left to defend.  Better to become homeless and live off the grid then have ones' life at the whim of an armed representative of the state who can enforce his whims like a soldier of an occupying force

Ferguson "White Construction Worker" Harassed As Drug Dealer

He was basically held incommunicado for quite a long time, and then hounded as if he were a drug dealer.

Police and other mysterious "Unknown Males," as described in the just-released transcript, treated these witnesses like criminals and drug dealers from the word go, in an extremely hostile fashion.  

It's no surprise as to why: they were very credible, uninvolved, witnesses that were going to testify to the grand jury - and they were white, meaning the prosecutors feared they would be credible.

For some lucky reason, we got a very nice triage nurse who led us thru some analysis. I'm very grateful my daughter was involved because I was (and still am) very mentally impaired besides being in acute pain. The nurse set up several doctor visits and I had one last night with a new doc. It seems like my body does not 'do' amLODIprine (Norvasc). I decided (since it is MY body) that I will not take that, or any chemical BP med) and it has been around 21 hours since my last dose. I'm starting to be in less pain. Somehow after googling "how long does it take to get relief from Norvasc?" long forums of people who have had the same long series of serious 'side-effects'. One guy thought (he was a younger guy too) that he had parkinsons and his doc concurred, put him on more meds for that and some on the forum have permanent damage from the BP med. Many describe it as feeling like a "Zombie".  I am, personally, looking forward to 2015.

This is not totally disconnected to this thread. This morning, for hours, when I could not physically get out of bed or even stand without falling, I laid in bed reading about LulzSec - check them out on Wiki. They are not an official group anymore, but in 2011 they hacked (among others) Sony, ATT&T, CIA, China, a couple of large banks.

The ONLY reason several of them were arrested was because other hacker groups exposed them. Arrests were made, all for males, ages 16, 19, 23 and 24.  Most of their hacks (the known ones) were not for $$, and they often just put up some message like "we have all your information, pls improve your cyber security". But at least the 16 and 19 year olds did not directly financially benefit from cyber security income. One of those young men was 'aspergers' and they were put under house arrest and not allowed internet or to go out without their moms. Some had to serve some jail time too.

This is regarding the recent Sony hack(s). I read about Stuxnet in 2011 and for some reason it did not get much media attention. Wired magazine did a very nice, long article on it tho. IMO, cyber attacks (not going to use the word 'warfare' since much of this is just pranks and 16 year old boy's ideas of 'fun') is where much of the power of 'struggles' is already going.

I do not think that 'regular' (non cyber expert) people would know anything about this except that some small linked group of genius hackers (may a few females too?) let some info out. They are letting us know that they are there/here. And they ARE! IMO, we need to try our hardest to listen and become aware of the power of the internet and the power of just a few linked individuals on the entire internet and planet.

J has been posting for months and months about IS marketing and PR instruments.  In my mind PR and hacking are very linked. Demonstrations, physical and cyber are done for PR and info releases and the 'crowd sourced' change is let happen. For some reason the US media has ignored it and if one wants to read about it then one needs to 1) go to the source (like J does) or read on UK news (the Guardian) or Al-jazeera.