Hidden Over 2 Years: Dem Cyber-Firm's Sworn Testimony It Had No Proof of Russian Hack of DNC

[SaltyTiger 7,764]

1 hour ago, I_M4_AU said:

To force states to come up with a mail-in system that do not have an established procedure for the sheer number of ballots it would entail just won’t work like Washington.  JMO

 Democratic run Broward County Florida and the likes would have a grand time with mail in.

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/11/13/broward-county-florida-recount-222543

President Donald Trump’s allegations that Broward Democrats are trying to steal the midterm elections through a “massively infected” recount process, but he wasn’t wrong when he told reporters: “If you look at Broward County, they have a horrible history.”

Democrats agree that the lack of serious partisan competition has led to bad incentives and bad habits for county

[DKW 86 7,411]

12 hours ago, AUDub said:

It was a big failure on both sides. The FBI shouldn't have been so low key about it, and should have been contacting the higher ups of the DNC (and when they found out, Crowdstrike was brought in) and the low level tech support dweeb shouldn't have been so flippant in his contact with the FBI regarding an issue above his pay grade. Said dweeb's testimony is what I linked above, by the way.

I wish I could say such occurrences are rare outside of this, but having worked in support, I know better. You've probably experienced it too. 

About 60+ hours a week...I love these people, but...If they would just listen and pay attention, I could move on to other items that really need to be addressed. 
Back when they were telling about the FBI warnings, DWS, her Congressional IT Guy (Arab National?), and Podesta all heard from the FBI. Whether they did anything, and I mean 5% or less action on their part, I would be shocked. I do remember just having an eyeroll moment while I was reading it. 

I do IT for a plant of about 1600 people, and have about 400 Users at various levels. I deal with about 150 Smartphone users, and about 300 Exchange Email Accounts. I am moving toward PLC & FIS Work, and far more Projects and Hardware Installs, TYL!, but I still deal with brand new 50+ year old PC Users almost everyday. Explain VPN to a 50+ year old thats never even had a smartphone. Welcome to my world. I feel like I am stuck in a perpetual Adult Education Class and the Users, all great people that God Knows and Loves, but have almost Zero contact with a PC. I had one of the most physically fit, sexiest (seriously), hottest guys in the plant, (Think Taye Diggs) come to me one day. He finally got his dream job. Great pay, etc. Finally off the line. A guy I have known for no crap 25+ years. He looked at the keyboard like Superman to Kryptonite. 50+ years and had never used a keyboard. I spent as many hours as it took until he got running with a buddy that could help him everyday. 

I have a handful of Users that are...illiterate. No crap. When we transitioned from one company to another, we had to transfer everything from one site to another. Took about 45 days, I had these people coming to me and making appointments. The staff got all upset about me having appointments. Well, the Illiterate Users didnt want staff knowing they were uneducated, (and had possibly faked their educations on their applications?) I had about 10-12 Users come to me with everything they had in their lives on or in a legal pad or written on a legal envelope by their significant others. One of the most humbling things I have ever done is have grown men come to me with all their personal info, bank account numbers, PWs, retirement account info etc and hand it all over to me while i entered into the system for them. When someone trusts you that much, you have to be absolutely sure you dont do something stupid nor forget anything. That a grown man, hell grown men, would trust me like that...well, I am tearing up writing this. That they would trust me to not make fun of them. Trust me to not tell another soul, to not name them, to not out them, well, it is very humbling. 

The point of a good life of a good man is that these people, possibly abused as a child, poor parents, poor educations, whatever, deserve as much respect as a guy with 2 degrees and counting, or even the CEO. You dont look down on people like that. They are navigating their way as best as they know how. I doubt any of these people are lazy, etc. I have seen them work hard as hell for 25+ years. I know they arent lazy. 

The people I have ZERO respect for are those that would look down on them. Just because You won Life's Lottery and got that job, or were born to those parents, doesnt mean that you are better. We all know some folks that are as educated as can be but just never get the right job. Or lose tthat job because someone ran off with their pension. (I think Jeff Immelt has a personally assigned place in hell.)I see this on both sides of the aisle and hate it everywhere. From Republicans that dislike-hate Immigrants fleeing with their families from a war-torn country to Democrat Elites that think EVERYONE with a southern accent is a inbred hick, I dislike them BOTH, EQUALLY. 

[DKW 86 7,411]

11 hours ago, AUDub said:

No, it is a formal charging document, not a request. It was true billed by a grand jury. 

That's what the trial is for. 

But, once again, you thick skulled ninny, I'm weighing the evidence contained therein independent of the fact that it is an indictment. I'm not treating it like an indictment. That's you. Treat it like a report on findings of fact. The evidence you asked me to link is contained there.

Of course, but again, immaterial. Read the ******* thing. Weigh the evidence for yourself. Stop dismissing it hamhandedly. 

I will weigh NOTHING that was not challenged at even the 1% level. We dont know if any of that script kiddie pablum really applies or would have made it into court without it going to court. Cut & Pasting a bunch of source code means or could mean nothing. For sake of argument, lets pretend that the servers actually had some real antimalware on them, OR some inate code blocking security existed in the OS. Just throwing this out here. Then all the source code pasting could be completely meaningless. It might never have executed. Crowdstrike is saying that the code is there, but again, Henry plainly says over and over we cannot say it actually executed, they have no record showing that it ever executed.

In a courtroom, if I have .357 handgun and my worst enemy died from a .357 wound to the head, it still means nothing unless you can put me in the room, with my gun. but then again that actually means nothing. Do I have GSR on my hand? Sure, went to the gun range with the presiding Judge the same day. So it means nothing in a courtroom. For it to mean anything in a courtroom: I have to be in the room, with GSR from my gun on my hands, with a matched bullet from the gun in my enemies head, and throw in a couple of witnesses that say I had possession of the gun at that time of day or was seen with the gun, etc. A lot of circumstantial evidence may mean something, or maybe not.  

Look, you are doing yeoman work toting water for these people but it still goes back to Henry, the Crowdstrike CEO said, REPEATEDLY SAID UNDER OATH, we cant factually prove any of this ever happened. And I still say, Occam's Razor: The Culprit was far more likely, or that the majority of damage came from, a very disgruntled Bernie Bro, working as DNC Staff, with a Thumbdrive, at about 1712 EDT, on a Friday Afternoon, downloaded files and walked out of the DNC Headquarters and handed them off to Wikileaks because they were pissed at how Bernie got screwed over. That is just as plausible, and 100X more easy to see than all this cloak and dagger crap that Henry plainly says he cannot prove. 

[I_M4_AU 7,773]

13 hours ago, Brad_ATX said:

So what Washington does is have dedicated, drive thru drop off locations.  The voter is the one that drives up to the box, drops their sealed vote in, and moves on.  An election volunteer is there to confirm that everything runs smoothly.  Then the ballots are taken directly from that box to the vote counting facility.  Eliminates the possibility of votes being unaccounted for as they are under the control of the voter and then the state the entire time.

I’m not familiar with how Washington implement this method and your article doesn’t mention it.  Each state will implement the vote by mail and may or may not be as successful as Washington.  I have one example: The Iowa caucuses (I know this is not by mail, but would you trust Iowa?).  Just don’t trust it at this time. 

[Brad_ATX 13,654]

3 hours ago, I_M4_AU said:

I’m not familiar with how Washington implement this method and your article doesn’t mention it.  Each state will implement the vote by mail and may or may not be as successful as Washington.  I have one example: The Iowa caucuses (I know this is not by mail, but would you trust Iowa?).  Just don’t trust it at this time. 

The Iowa Caucuses aren't really voting like we normally think of it though.  There are revotes based on viability and so much more that makes it odd.  And the state didn't implement that issue with reporting.  It was the Democratic party that screwed up by not testing the app earlier.

[I_M4_AU 7,773]

2 hours ago, Brad_ATX said:

The Iowa Caucuses aren't really voting like we normally think of it though.  There are revotes based on viability and so much more that makes it odd.  And the state didn't implement that issue with reporting.  It was the Democratic party that screwed up by not testing the app earlier.

Again, just don’t trust a rushed attempt at mail-in ballots to be in place by October (early voting) and November.  I won’t be making the decision, but I can see the detractors argument.

[ToraGirl 5,498]

On 5/14/2020 at 11:01 AM, wdefromtx said:

Russia!!! Russia!! Russia!!! LOL 

Russia! China! Russia! China! Russia! I said China! Russia! Chyyyyyy-na! CHINA! 🤣😉🤣😉🤣😉

[jj3jordan 2,040]

On 5/14/2020 at 10:36 AM, AUDub said:

Tom knows what's up. 

 

Hope so!

[AUDub 11,131]

17 hours ago, DKW 86 said:

About 60+ hours a week...I love these people, but...If they would just listen and pay attention, I could move on to other items that really need to be addressed. 
Back when they were telling about the FBI warnings, DWS, her Congressional IT Guy (Arab National?), and Podesta all heard from the FBI. Whether they did anything, and I mean 5% or less action on their part, I would be shocked. I do remember just having an eyeroll moment while I was reading it. 

I do IT for a plant of about 1600 people, and have about 400 Users at various levels. I deal with about 150 Smartphone users, and about 300 Exchange Email Accounts. I am moving toward PLC & FIS Work, and far more Projects and Hardware Installs, TYL!, but I still deal with brand new 50+ year old PC Users almost everyday. Explain VPN to a 50+ year old thats never even had a smartphone. Welcome to my world. I feel like I am stuck in a perpetual Adult Education Class and the Users, all great people that God Knows and Loves, but have almost Zero contact with a PC. I had one of the most physically fit, sexiest (seriously), hottest guys in the plant, (Think Taye Diggs) come to me one day. He finally got his dream job. Great pay, etc. Finally off the line. A guy I have known for no crap 25+ years. He looked at the keyboard like Superman to Kryptonite. 50+ years and had never used a keyboard. I spent as many hours as it took until he got running with a buddy that could help him everyday. 

I have a handful of Users that are...illiterate. No crap. When we transitioned from one company to another, we had to transfer everything from one site to another. Took about 45 days, I had these people coming to me and making appointments. The staff got all upset about me having appointments. Well, the Illiterate Users didnt want staff knowing they were uneducated, (and had possibly faked their educations on their applications?) I had about 10-12 Users come to me with everything they had in their lives on or in a legal pad or written on a legal envelope by their significant others. One of the most humbling things I have ever done is have grown men come to me with all their personal info, bank account numbers, PWs, retirement account info etc and hand it all over to me while i entered into the system for them. When someone trusts you that much, you have to be absolutely sure you dont do something stupid nor forget anything. That a grown man, hell grown men, would trust me like that...well, I am tearing up writing this. That they would trust me to not make fun of them. Trust me to not tell another soul, to not name them, to not out them, well, it is very humbling. 

The point of a good life of a good man is that these people, possibly abused as a child, poor parents, poor educations, whatever, deserve as much respect as a guy with 2 degrees and counting, or even the CEO. You dont look down on people like that. They are navigating their way as best as they know how. I doubt any of these people are lazy, etc. I have seen them work hard as hell for 25+ years. I know they arent lazy. 

The people I have ZERO respect for are those that would look down on them. Just because You won Life's Lottery and got that job, or were born to those parents, doesnt mean that you are better. We all know some folks that are as educated as can be but just never get the right job. Or lose tthat job because someone ran off with their pension. (I think Jeff Immelt has a personally assigned place in hell.)I see this on both sides of the aisle and hate it everywhere. From Republicans that dislike-hate Immigrants fleeing with their families from a war-torn country to Democrat Elites that think EVERYONE with a southern accent is a inbred hick, I dislike them BOTH, EQUALLY. 

FWIW, I never frown upon people that are completely lost when it comes to computers and ask for help in good faith. I have advantages they do not.

Got my first PC back when they were considered a novelty. To this day, the best birthday present I ever received was when my parents brought me a crusty old Packard-Bell 386 on my 10th birthday. I would spend hours on the thing! Posted in BBS before forums like this one, before AOL was a thing and all that jive. Old enough to remember the good old Usenet days. Remember when magazines used to have full page spreads of games you could compile in BASIC? I learned low-level coding that way lol. Also made me a troublemaker at school. I had ways around their web filters in the computer labs.

The thing that will bother me is when someone in a position of power, a VP of ops unfamiliar with IT and how important it is, for example, takes that "what exactly do you do here?" attitude. You know the type. Things run smoothly because people like you exist and keep things from coming apart at the seams, but because things run smoothly they assume it will always be that way. The sort that will slash IT not realizing the importance of the folks keeping their business running. The only way they learn is if something happens that bites them in the ass. It's unfortunately still common.

[AUDub 11,131]

19 hours ago, DKW 86 said:

I will weigh NOTHING that was not challenged at even the 1% level. We dont know if any of that script kiddie pablum really applies or would have made it into court without it going to court. Cut & Pasting a bunch of source code means or could mean nothing. For sake of argument, lets pretend that the servers actually had some real antimalware on them, OR some inate code blocking security existed in the OS. Just throwing this out here. Then all the source code pasting could be completely meaningless. It might never have executed. Crowdstrike is saying that the code is there, but again, Henry plainly says over and over we cannot say it actually executed, they have no record showing that it ever executed.

Competing cybersecurity firms, Mandiant and Fidelis, confirmed Crowdstrike's findings when provided with images. The malware was there and well established. Hell, the FBI even warned Mr. Tamene that DNC computers on the network were "calling home," as it were. Home being Russia.

And it was complex stuff. We're not talking about commonly traded malware you'd find on the darkweb among skiddies here. Protection against threats on that scale cost money, money the DNC didn't allocate.

And again, I'm asking you to weigh the evidence contained therein. That it's an indictment is immaterial to the point I'm making. Weigh the evidence yourself. 

Quote

In a courtroom, if I have .357 handgun and my worst enemy died from a .357 wound to the head, it still means nothing unless you can put me in the room, with my gun. but then again that actually means nothing. Do I have GSR on my hand? Sure, went to the gun range with the presiding Judge the same day. So it means nothing in a courtroom. For it to mean anything in a courtroom: I have to be in the room, with GSR from my gun on my hands, with a matched bullet from the gun in my enemies head, and throw in a couple of witnesses that say I had possession of the gun at that time of day or was seen with the gun, etc. A lot of circumstantial evidence may mean something, or maybe not.

Circumstantial evidende is a silly cop-out. All "circumstantial evidence" means is that an inference must be drawn. Direct evidence is that it’s raining outside is if you look out a window and see raindrops falling, circumstantial evidence is that you see someone come in from outside, and their coat and umbrella are soaking wet. In both situations, no reasonable person would have any doubt that it is raining outside.

So weigh what the link says in your ownm draw the inference. Don't dismiss the link out of hand. 

Quote

Look, you are doing yeoman work toting water for these people but it still goes back to Henry, the Crowdstrike CEO said, REPEATEDLY SAID UNDER OATH, we cant factually prove any of this ever happened. And I still say, Occam's Razor: The Culprit was far more likely, or that the majority of damage came from, a very disgruntled Bernie Bro, working as DNC Staff, with a Thumbdrive, at about 1712 EDT, on a Friday Afternoon, downloaded files and walked out of the DNC Headquarters and handed them off to Wikileaks because they were pissed at how Bernie got screwed over. That is just as plausible, and 100X more easy to see than all this cloak and dagger crap that Henry plainly says he cannot prove. 

The "thumb drive" thing is a silly red herring, your tacit endorsement of the Seth Rich conspiracy theory. Biddle's analysis is that you linked earlier is hilariously flawed. 

[DKW 86 7,411]

6 hours ago, AUDub said:

FWIW, I never frown upon people that are completely lost when it comes to computers and ask for help in good faith. I have advantages they do not.

Got my first PC back when they were considered a novelty. To this day, the best birthday present I ever received was when my parents brought me a crusty old Packard-Bell 386 on my 10th birthday. I would spend hours on the thing! Posted in BBS before forums like this one, before AOL was a thing and all that jive. Old enough to remember the good old Usenet days. Remember when magazines used to have full page spreads of games you could compile in BASIC? I learned low-level coding that way lol. Also made me a troublemaker at school. I had ways around their web filters in the computer labs.

Punched in a bunch of those old basic games. Debugged them, hell hacked them too. At AU, I was one of the first to have a good, not great, Word Processor outside of those that typed resume's and papers for a living. I had a Commodore VIC20 that I wrote a Payroll program for my dads's business on. I had also had a Commodore 64 with expansions for memory and basic commands, hot keys etc. I did papers on the side in Dorm 1.  

The thing that will bother me is when someone in a position of power, a VP of ops unfamiliar with IT and how important it is, for example, takes that "what exactly do you do here?" attitude. You know the type. Things run smoothly because people like you exist and keep things from coming apart at the seams, but because things run smoothly they assume it will always be that way. The sort that will slash IT not realizing the importance of the folks keeping their business running. The only way they learn is if something happens that bites them in the ass. It's unfortunately still common.

Corporately, we had such poor managers in IT, that we were suicidally over budget year after year. At the corporate office, we had about 70 people too many on payroll and them way over paid. I wont go into the insanity but we had just incredibly stupid people that were living in fantasy worlds leading. In the last year, we have outsourced about 300 IT jobs. and most HIGH LEVEL JOBS. 

I have a few super powers keeping me employed. Believe it or not, Oracle ERP is now in its 7th year of install, and we now see the end as maybe a 10 year event. At a TEAMS conference call event, I asked about when we could retire the old system. 30+ IT Leaders exploded in laughter in the room at corporate. Our CIO said, "ERP was sold as a three year event, I now HOPE the ERP Transition will be a 10 year event." IOW he sees at least another 3 years before we can go 100% Live on Oracle. ERP has been a TOTAL DISASTER. Could not have gone worse. We have to maintain two inventories, because NO ONE trusts the Oracle numbers, NO ONE.  The previous leadership was tone deaf to how truly poorly they were doing. I describe my old boss as "the co-op that didnt know when to leave." He got promoted because he was with the company longer than everyone else, not because he mastered anything, he did not. He surrounded himself with overpaid do-nothings that camouflaged how poorly he did his job for at least 10 and maybe 15 years. We now have an outsource company that I almost feel sorry for, but not really. They have driven the wages down in IT for everyone and will continue to do so. They do a meh job at best and couldnt care less if what they do actually works. NO SKIN IN THE GAME. Me, I am the Catcher in the Rye, I do care about my people and my plant, and I pull off some mild miracles at times. Ask me about the $40K PBX Replacement for 400 Extensions. Original estimate was $280K. Or $70K for a $300K Camera upgrade. I also fix the 1001 things that the Outsource People just dont care to finish. 

Back to Oracle. Oracle Team left some time in 2013. Gave up and walked away. We didnt get PeopleSoft, WMS, and after 7 years barely have iProc running at a serviceable but not trustable level. WMS, Complete Absolute Fail, Oracle Team could not get it to work in one facility, NOT ONE, and its been 7 long years. We were totally sold out for it and it never worked, not one day.

So, I help maintain a no-crap 66 year-old Univac#2 inventory and shipping system . We do Inventory on a system that is written in Windows 95, 98, & 2000. We use WMDC every day on W10. I am one of the Merlins and with a very small team manage to keep it running... That and being old enough to maintain other legacy software systems that actually do work is my SuperPower. We are competing at World Class levels with a 66 year-old system that has updated interfaces and some custom built software attachments that was supposed to work as a intermediate step from old to Oracle. That band-aid is now 7 years old and finally updated to post 2005 hardware last year.  

[DKW 86 7,411]

5 hours ago, AUDub said:

Competing cybersecurity firms, Mandiant and Fidelis, confirmed Crowdstrike's findings when provided with PARTIAL images. The malware was there and well established. Hell, the FBI even warned Mr. Tamene that DNC computers on the network were "calling home," as it were. Home being Russia.Calling Home doesnt mean that anything actually went, or was received. 

And it was complex stuff. We're not talking about commonly traded malware you'd find on the darkweb among skiddies here. Protection against threats on that scale cost money, money the DNC didn't allocate.

And again, I'm asking you to weigh the evidence contained therein. That it's an indictment is immaterial to the point I'm making. Weigh the evidence yourself. 

Circumstantial evidende is a silly cop-out. All "circumstantial evidence" means is that an inference must be drawn. Direct evidence is that it’s raining outside is if you look out a window and see raindrops falling, circumstantial evidence is that you see someone come in from outside, and their coat and umbrella are soaking wet. In both situations, no reasonable person would have any doubt that it is raining outside.

So weigh what the link says in your ownm draw the inference. Don't dismiss the link out of hand. 

The "thumb drive" thing is a silly red herring, your tacit endorsement of the Seth Rich conspiracy theory. Biddle's analysis is that you linked earlier is hilariously flawed. 

And Circumstantial Evidence doesnt prove anything.

Circumstantial evidence is a very tricky thing. It may seem to point very straight to one thing, but if you shift your own point of view a little, you may find it pointing in an equally uncompromising manner to something entirely different

Arthur Conan Doyle

Witness testimony is always flawed. It's better than circumstantial evidence, sure, but people aren't camcorders; they don't record every action and reaction, and the very act of remembering involves chosing words, actions and images. In other words, any witness who was supposed to be giving a court facts is really just giving them a version of fiction.

Jodi Picoult

Even the clearest and most perfect circumstantial evidence is likely to be at fault, after all, and therefore ought to be received with great caution. Take the case of any pencil, sharpened by any woman; if you have witnesses, you will find she did it with a knife; but if you take simply the aspect of the pencil, you will say that she did it with her teeth.

Mark Twain

[aubiefifty 16,717]

On 5/15/2020 at 6:53 AM, DKW 86 said:

I will weigh NOTHING that was not challenged at even the 1% level. We dont know if any of that script kiddie pablum really applies or would have made it into court without it going to court. Cut & Pasting a bunch of source code means or could mean nothing. For sake of argument, lets pretend that the servers actually had some real antimalware on them, OR some inate code blocking security existed in the OS. Just throwing this out here. Then all the source code pasting could be completely meaningless. It might never have executed. Crowdstrike is saying that the code is there, but again, Henry plainly says over and over we cannot say it actually executed, they have no record showing that it ever executed.

In a courtroom, if I have .357 handgun and my worst enemy died from a .357 wound to the head, it still means nothing unless you can put me in the room, with my gun. but then again that actually means nothing. Do I have GSR on my hand? Sure, went to the gun range with the presiding Judge the same day. So it means nothing in a courtroom. For it to mean anything in a courtroom: I have to be in the room, with GSR from my gun on my hands, with a matched bullet from the gun in my enemies head, and throw in a couple of witnesses that say I had possession of the gun at that time of day or was seen with the gun, etc. A lot of circumstantial evidence may mean something, or maybe not.  

Look, you are doing yeoman work toting water for these people but it still goes back to Henry, the Crowdstrike CEO said, REPEATEDLY SAID UNDER OATH, we cant factually prove any of this ever happened. And I still say, Occam's Razor: The Culprit was far more likely, or that the majority of damage came from, a very disgruntled Bernie Bro, working as DNC Staff, with a Thumbdrive, at about 1712 EDT, on a Friday Afternoon, downloaded files and walked out of the DNC Headquarters and handed them off to Wikileaks because they were pissed at how Bernie got screwed over. That is just as plausible, and 100X more easy to see than all this cloak and dagger crap that Henry plainly says he cannot prove. 

in the feds civil service three things can get you fired. lying on your resume, fighting, and stealing. i doubt that has changed in the last decade...............

[AUDub 11,131]

4 hours ago, DKW 86 said:

I have a few super powers keeping me employed. Believe it or not, Oracle ERP is now in its 7th year of install, and we now see the end as maybe a 10 year event. At a TEAMS conference call event, I asked about when we could retire the old system. 30+ IT Leaders exploded in laughter in the room at corporate. Our CIO said, "ERP was sold as a three year event, I now HOPE the ERP Transition will be a 10 year event." IOW he sees at least another 3 years before we can go 100% Live on Oracle. ERP has been a TOTAL DISASTER. Could not have gone worse. We have to maintain two inventories, because NO ONE trusts the Oracle numbers, NO ONE.  The previous leadership was tone deaf to how truly poorly they were doing. I describe my old boss as "the co-op that didnt know when to leave." He got promoted because he was with the company longer than everyone else, not because he mastered anything, he did not. He surrounded himself with overpaid do-nothings that camouflaged how poorly he did his job for at least 10 and maybe 15 years. We now have an outsource company that I almost feel sorry for, but not really. They have driven the wages down in IT for everyone and will continue to do so. They do a meh job at best and couldnt care less if what they do actually works. NO SKIN IN THE GAME. Me, I am the Catcher in the Rye, I do care about my people and my plant, and I pull off some mild miracles at times. Ask me about the $40K PBX Replacement for 400 Extensions. Original estimate was $280K. Or $70K for a $300K Camera upgrade. I also fix the 1001 things that the Outsource People just dont care to finish. 

Back to Oracle. Oracle Team left some time in 2013. Gave up and walked away. We didnt get PeopleSoft, WMS, and after 7 years barely have iProc running at a serviceable but not trustable level. WMS, Complete Absolute Fail, Oracle Team could not get it to work in one facility, NOT ONE, and its been 7 long years. We were totally sold out for it and it never worked, not one day.

So, I help maintain a no-crap 66 year-old Univac#2 inventory and shipping system . We do Inventory on a system that is written in Windows 95, 98, & 2000. We use WMDC every day on W10. I am one of the Merlins and with a very small team manage to keep it running... That and being old enough to maintain other legacy software systems that actually do work is my SuperPower. We are competing at World Class levels with a 66 year-old system that has updated interfaces and some custom built software attachments that was supposed to work as a intermediate step from old to Oracle. That band-aid is now 7 years old and finally updated to post 2005 hardware last year.  

There's a lot of interia with large organizations that keeps things from being, you know, bleeding edge. Implementation costs a lot in time and resources, compatibility is an issue and bringing the staff up to speed is difficult . As an example, so much of our banking infrastructure and the like still relies on dilapidated old COBOL, a programming language that first appeared in 1959 and basically the functional equivalent of Egyptian hieroglyphics among those of us that can code. I've halfway considered investing a few months into learning the language because it doesn't look like it's going away anytime soon and people that know this ancient language will be more and more in demand as the current workforce maintaining it ages out. And why haven't they moved on? Ain't broke, don't fix it.

And it goes further than that, bordering on the comical. NASA is scrounging for old 8086 processors, and the most important computer on the ISS is a 386, same as my first PC 25 years ago. Many VA systems still utilize MS-DOS. 

And there's really no good way to do it. It's difficult to get a lot of people higher up in the chain of command to weigh the cost/benefit analysis of keeping things up to date when things just work as they are. 

Then we get to netsec, which, by nature, will pretty much always be a reactionary thing. There will always be vulnerabilities, and state level actors like we're discussing here are often so sophisticated that the only way new vulnerabilities are discovered is when things are already compromised.

I was lucky. Our IT at my (now former) employer was excellent, and our VP of ops (not an IT guy) knew how to hire people that knew what they were doing, listened closely and lobbied hard to implement pretty much anything folks on the networking side and the biomedical (me, basically) side requested.

I was generally the liasion between IT and biomedical, but I wore many hats. IT simply refused to touch anything remotely considered medical quipment. When we finally transitioned from XP to 7 (later than we should have, mind you), I was the guy that managed that on the medical side, and a crap ton of our medical equipment ran legacy embedded OSs. I'm also the guy that helped install, expanded and pretty much solely maintained the mission critical patient monitoring networks (only guy that could use PuTTY or do anything in a CLI, go figure). Wireless telemetry. Configured and maintained several servers. It was a fun and challenging job. Hated leaving, but the pay my new employer offered me was too good to pass up, and I've expanded my skills further with a much more in depth dive into PLC and the like than I've ever had the pleasure of experiencing.

God, those BASIC games. I'd spend hours trying to figure out where I jacked it up while copying them over lol. Would be over the moon when I got them working. Taught me discipline while typing and in coding though. 

[AUDub 11,131]

On 5/16/2020 at 7:40 AM, DKW 86 said:

And Circumstantial Evidence doesnt prove anything.

No that's not true. Circumstantial evidence can be every bit at probative as direct evidence. Fingerprints, ballistics, DNA, these are all forms of circumstantial evidence, as is just about every other bit of forensic evidence you'll ever see.

As an example. Titan and I visit your house for a few hours. We're just chilling in the kitchen - you regaling us with tales of how much you think Homer sucks and what you'd do to him if you ever saw him walking by - when we see Homer walking down the street. "Hold on a second," you say. I watch you grab a katana with "I will use this on Homer" etched onto the blade, your single shot blunderbuss with "this will also be used on Homer" etched onto the barrel, then follow him down the street. You follow him around a corner into a dead end alley where I can't see what's going on. "Oh, hi David. Nice day out," I hear Homer say.

*stabbing noises, screaming followed by a gunshot*

"Why, David?! Why did you stab me and shoot me?!" *dead*

I see you round the corner coming home, now covered in blood,  wielding a bloody katana and carrying a smoking blunderbuss. Titan goes to look in the alley. Homer's corpse is the only thing present. The only way in or out is the path which you and Homer took. 

"Glad that's over with," I hear you muttering.

Titan calls the police, you're promptly arrested and charged with murder. At the autopsy,  Homer's stab wounds perfectly match the katana, which you brought back and chucked into your sink without washing, and the gunshot wound can only have come from a blunderbuss, which ballistics confirm came from the gun you were carrying. 

At trial,  I'm on the stand. Under questioning by the prosecutor, I share that I had heard you, on multiple occasions,  say that you were going to stab that sorry son of a bitch Homer with that exact katana the state presents as evidence, and shoot him in the balls with the blunderbuss also in evidence. Your prints and only your prints are on both weapons. The blood on your clothes and the sword perfectly matches Homer's, and the ballistics on the blunderbuss, again, match. 

Your defense attorney cross-examines me. "Mr. Dub, did you actually see my client stab or shoot Mr. Sapien?"

"No, I did not," I reply.

Titan is also called as a witness, his testimony is a perfect match with mine.

Your attorney's closing argument is that there's no way the jury can convict solely on circumstantial evidence.

Is the standard of reasonable doubt met here? If you say no, you're a loon. That's the question that must be answered, and juries are instructed to give both direct and circumstantial evidence equal weight.

There is one rule that is constant when it comes to criminal law and that is proving a person is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. It is not about direct or circumstantial evidence at all. It is if you can prove that the person committed the wrong. Anything that basically satisfies the judge and jury that the person accused is guilty ends the story.

[DKW 86 7,411]

So close...

Witness testimony is overcome by the other evidence in your example. Your example was a great example of too much direct evidence. 

Lets say Homer hates me, and knows he is terminal with cancer, heart disease, stupidity, whatever. He conspires to frame me with his last breath. He gives a false deathbed claim that "Why, David?! Why did you shoot stab me and shoot me?!" *dead* knowing that deathbed confessions are admissible and yet cannot be cross-examined. You could change 1-2 facts in your example and get a completely different outcome. 

If you ever study the false accusations that are made daily by truly evil people, you will see that those trying to make the Perfect Crime are far more numerous than some would ever believe. The guile of man has no limit. 

[AUDub 11,131]

11 minutes ago, DKW 86 said:

So close...

Witness testimony is overcome by the other evidence in your example. Your example was a great example of too much direct evidence. 

No because none of the evidence in my example was direct evidence. Nobody actually saw you commit the murder, even though you quite obviously did. Fact of the the matter is, an inference was required, making every bit of that hypothetical a circumstantial case. That inference can be strong or weak, and cumulatively the evidence was overwhelming.

11 minutes ago, DKW 86 said:

Lets say Homer hates me, and knows he is terminal with cancer, heart disease, stupidity, whatever. He conspires to frame me with his last breath. He gives a false deathbed claim that "Why, David?! Why did you shoot stab me and shoot me?!" *dead* knowing that deathbed confessions are admissible and yet cannot be cross-examined. You could change 1-2 facts in your example and get a completely different outcome. 

The hypothetical was extremely clear on this. Homer died from wounds that can only have come from the weapons you carried into the alley, and only your prints were found on both weapons. His blood was on the sword and the bullet came from your gun. 

11 minutes ago, DKW 86 said:

If you ever study the false accusations that are made daily by truly evil people, you will see that those trying to make the Perfect Crime are far more numerous than some would ever believe. The guile of man has no limit. 

Holy s*** I hope you never serve on any juries. Your definition of reasonable doubt is insane.

[DKW 86 7,411]

We are talking around each other.

HENRY SAID THAT HE CANNOT PROVE THAT ANY FILES WERE EVER TRANSMITTED. HE SAID MULTIPLE TIMES, UNDER OATH.

I am applying Occams Razor too. I and many others find it funny that no one even challenges this THEORY. We also find it funny that IN SPITE of many times declaring that Crowdstrike cannot prove it happened, so many want to lemming off the cliff and swear it is true even if they tell you that they cannot prove it. I am being consistent and reasonable here. I am not denying anything. I am being as true to evidence and science as I can be.

Last .02. If the DNC hadnt been so devious, none of this would matter. It only caused them any damage because of WTH they were up to. The revelation of their emails showed DWS  et al to be corrupt as hell.

 

[auburn41 492]

On 5/16/2020 at 11:47 AM, AUDub said:

And it goes further than that, bordering on the comical. NASA is scrounging for old 8086 processors, and the most important computer on the ISS is a 386, same as my first PC 25 years ago. Many VA systems still utilize MS-DOS. 

I don't know why you think this borders on comical and as someone who regularly makes sales calls on NASA (and sells them products regularly), they are not scrounging 8086 processors.  The fact is the ISS has been in space since 1998.  It would be a natural assumption that computers used would be from years prior to launch.  The environment in space is way different than here.  Parts have to be RadHard (protected from radiation) because radiation wreaks havoc on silicon semiconductors.  As the silicon geometry gets smaller, radiation has more of an affect.  In other words silicon parts made today are way less survivable in a high radiation environment than parts made 25 or 30 years ago.  Semiconductors made from other materials, like Gallium Arsenide handle radiation much better than silicon, but it is about 1000 times more expensive to make Gallium Arsenide than it is to make parts out of Silicon.  The state of the art RadHard Single Board Computer (SBC) (for instance) that I sell, is based on the IBM PowerPC 750 that was introduced in the early 2000's.  If you (and I mean the government because they of course don't have any money, it it your's along with anyone else that pays taxes) want to buy my RadHard SBC, it can set you back up to about $750K for 1 SBC based on the testing that you require.  This SBC is used on most of the satellites that are being launched now.....Here is the product brief if you are interested in buying one.

SCS750XXpb.pdf

[AUDub 11,131]

2 hours ago, auburn41 said:

I don't know why you think this borders on comical and as someone who regularly makes sales calls on NASA (and sells them products regularly), they are not scrounging 8086 processors.  The fact is the ISS has been in space since 1998.  It would be a natural assumption that computers used would be from years prior to launch.  The environment in space is way different than here.  Parts have to be RadHard (protected from radiation) because radiation wreaks havoc on silicon semiconductors.  As the silicon geometry gets smaller, radiation has more of an affect.  In other words silicon parts made today are way less survivable in a high radiation environment than parts made 25 or 30 years ago.  Semiconductors made from other materials, like Gallium Arsenide handle radiation much better than silicon, but it is about 1000 times more expensive to make Gallium Arsenide than it is to make parts out of Silicon.  The state of the art RadHard Single Board Computer (SBC) (for instance) that I sell, is based on the IBM PowerPC 750 that was introduced in the early 2000's.  If you (and I mean the government because they of course don't have any money, it it your's along with anyone else that pays taxes) want to buy my RadHard SBC, it can set you back up to about $750K for 1 SBC based on the testing that you require.  This SBC is used on most of the satellites that are being launched now.....Here is the product brief if you are interested in buying one.

SCS750XXpb.pdfUnavailable

No the comical thing about the 8086 thing is that NASA did indeed have to dig deep for them near the end of the space shuttle's tenure. I remember several articles at the time detailing how they had turned to eBay for 8086s. These didn't need to be rad hard as they were for SRB test equipment on the ground.

And I very much get the point about robustness. The 386 is a beast for embedded applications in mission critical equipment. I know of at least one C-arm in inventory that still utilized one when I came aboard at Children's a decade ago. But it's still a nearly 40 year old architecture. 

[AUDub 11,131]

LOL sorry, homer. In my defense, last time I did a similar hypothetical I had you murdering Raptor in a pool house. 

 

[AUDub 11,131]

11 hours ago, DKW 86 said:

We are talking around each other.

HENRY SAID THAT HE CANNOT PROVE THAT ANY FILES WERE EVER TRANSMITTED. HE SAID MULTIPLE TIMES, UNDER OATH.

I am applying Occams Razor too. I and many others find it funny that no one even challenges this THEORY. We also find it funny that IN SPITE of many times declaring that Crowdstrike cannot prove it happened, so many want to lemming off the cliff and swear it is true even if they tell you that they cannot prove it. I am being consistent and reasonable here. I am not denying anything. I am being as true to evidence and science as I can be.

No your objection is pretty silly. Compare it to a burglary. We know they're a well known thief with multiple priors (Fancy and Cozy Bear). The burglar's prints were all over the scene (validated by Crowdstrike, Fidelis, Mandiant, the FBI). Multiple credible witnesses saw them enter the property and spend an extended period of time there (Crowdstrike, Fidelis, Mandiant, the FBI). Their prints were all over the stolen property . We know where the stolen property was fenced (read the indictment) . We know who they had sell it on the aftermarket (Guccifer 2.0, again, read the indictment).

But because no one saw them walk out with it, we should assume an alternative explanation? No. Nice try.

11 hours ago, DKW 86 said:

Last .02. If the DNC hadnt been so devious, none of this would matter. It only caused them any damage because of WTH they were up to. The revelation of their emails showed DWS  et al to be corrupt as hell.

Shameful, but neither here nor there. They got into the RNC too. Didn't dump that info. Wonder why?

[DKW 86 7,411]

8 hours ago, AUDub said:

No your objection is pretty silly. Compare it to a burglary. We know they're a well known thief with multiple priors (Fancy and Cozy Bear). The burglar's prints were all over the scene (validated by Crowdstrike, Fidelis, Mandiant, the FBI). Multiple credible witnesses saw them enter the property and spend an extended period of time there (Crowdstrike, Fidelis, Mandiant, the FBI). Their prints were all over the stolen property . We know where the stolen property was fenced (read the indictment) . We know who they had sell it on the aftermarket (Guccifer 2.0, again, read the indictment).

But because no one saw them walk out with it, we should assume an alternative explanation? No. Nice try.

Shameful, but neither here nor there. They got into the RNC too. Didn't dump that info. Wonder why?

At the RNC, you would likely see a bunch of whining about Trump, but at the EOD, what were they going to do?

And, BTW, Wikileaks has forever said that they did not get the emails from the Russians but from a disgruntled staffer.

[AUDub 11,131]

On 5/18/2020 at 7:47 AM, DKW 86 said:

At the RNC, you would likely see a bunch of whining about Trump, but at the EOD, what were they going to do?

What you characterize as whining could very well be cast in the same light as the DNC treated Bernie, which was admittedly unfair, and DWS resignation was ultimately well deserved. 

On 5/18/2020 at 7:47 AM, DKW 86 said:

And, BTW, Wikileaks has forever said that they did not get the emails from the Russians but from a disgruntled staffer.

And Wikileaks is not exactly a credible source on this, and it's in their best interests to muddy the waters.

[DKW 86 7,411]

7 hours ago, AUDub said:

What you characterize as whining could very well be cast in the same light as the DNC treated Bernie, which was admittedly unfair, and DWS resignation was ultimately well deserved. 

And Wikileaks is not exactly a credible source on this, and it's in their best interests to muddy the waters.

Really, then why bother to even consider testimony in any case? Just ignore anything that doesnt fit your narrative no matter how much evidence there is of it. 

Reality: Crowdstrike CEO says he cannot prove anything. Wikileaks, whose whole schtick is to out Elitist misdeeds suddenly wants to destroy their credibility and work by working with Russians, whom they also out daily??? Does that sound logical? Does it? No, of course not. 

HRC went from strapping a mattress to her back with the now 100% Discredited "Russian Reset." No one thinks that went well. Anyone with a brain in their head ever thought it would. SAo Clinton, as usual, gets to have it both ways. "Russian Reset" was flawed plan from Step One. It was a waste of time. After it blew up in her face ans it 100% Guaranteed to do from Step One, then she is suddenly a Russian Hawk and why Putin must take her down???? Is that your reality? I think Putin wants more of this idiot in power. The person that did the most damage is now the one that is most feared??? What reality do you live in?

Does Trump owe his life to the Russians Financially? Yes!!!!! That is 100% Legit.
But this convoluted idea that Russia was scared of the person they just conned to pieces is just silly. 
And the bottomline: HRC still outspent DJT by close to $500M. The Russians spending what $1.3M and overcoming a $500M advantage??? Do you really do math that bad? The DNC emails were only a negative because of what was in them. If they were dealing straight up with Sanders, there would be no story here at all.