
What a...
...p'tach!
Colorado Springs police are on the lookout for a man who attempted to rob two 7-Eleven convenience stores early Wednesday with a Klingon bat'leth sword. The first robbery was reported at about 2:00 AM after a man described as wearing a black mask, black jacket, and blue jeans entered the store brandishing the traditional …
I have a Bat'leth, in amongst a small collection of weapons, of both real and fictitious origin and frankly most of those available are about as dangerous as the rubbery props used in the show. I would be substantially more worried about the life threatening nature of being forced to eat, or headbutted with, a 7-eleven pastie than being attacked with most of the Bat'leth's out there.
Fictional. Fictional. Fictional.
As in, to do with fiction. Fictitious means fake, false or a lie. This is to do with fiction- this makes it fictional.
Well done, though, for using a word to sound cool in your anti Star Trek/ Star Wars crusade, I think we know the true hit with the ladies....
Now piss off and read BBC News where the big bad comment button can't tempt you.
"Meh, bloody Trekkies should wake up and smell the non-holo coffee (along with those who put 'Jedi' down as their religion)"
There is no difference between Jedi as a religion and Christianity (etc).
- All are fictitious
- All were written by men
- All have followers, some who truly believe and some who just like to participate
[stows Lightsabre]
What is surprising is the number of people who still think the Bat'leth, like many so-called "alien" weapons on various shows, is *no*t a perfectly Human martial-arts blade that has been "embellished". So the Police may not be looking for a Trekkie (and I use the word advisedly) down on his luck, but possible someone who mail-ordered Martial-Art weapons from a catalogue.
And it is not a sword - if anything, it is closer to a double hand-axe configuration.
It's not a bat'leth. Bat'leth's are BIG. That thing he's holding in the footage is clearly not a sword, it's very obviously one of the novelty daggers you can get from pretty much any anorak-supplier.
e.g. http://www.swordsdirect.com/valdris.html
The other thing about bat'leths is this: they're actually quite hard to get. Most of the accurate ones you see are home-made, as Paramount (quite sensibly) hasn't licensed anyone to produce accurate bat'leths for fear, one assumes, of precisely this kind of story. I doubt this numpty bothered to build his own weapon for what seems to be an opportunist crime.
If its a sharp piece of metal it can hurt, damage and kill a human as we are not made of metal or other stabb and general beating proof material. It dosent matter what you call it or how bad it would be in a real combat situation against an armoured and armed opponant. Sharp metal Vs. Squichy human? i do belive the sharp metal will win more often than not.
There's a reason the blade looks kind of "alien", it is *no*t a perfectly Human martial-arts blade and i reckon anyone actually trying to use one outside a TV show would be much more likely to damage themselves than a convenience store clerk. Unless they're a Klingon, natch.
Klingon is a fictitious race by all your definitions.
"fake" - Check.
"false" - Check.
"a lie" - Ah, what is a fiction if not a lie?
Now fuck off back to your sad geek cave, which is no doubt replete with ladies.
"Kahless the Unforgettable" the cycling fanatic or the one who didn't look where he was going?
@ "Meh, bloody Trekkies should wake up and smell the non-holo coffee (along with those who put 'Jedi' down as their religion)"
some of us athiests did it to wind up the C of E.
i mean come on, jediism is more of a religion that scientology ever will be and hass more relevance than christianity or islam or any of the horrible religions. buddhism is about the only decent one
wot no transporter harmonic trace for the Federation ship in orbit around early 21stC Earth to detect?
hmmm, I smell a breach of the Temporal Prime Directive on the way. Transparent aluminium is already here so what other technology from the 24thC might we be seeing soon?
my ears are stuck :(
I think this is exactly the reason we and america need to join forces and ban extreme sci-fi. Obviously, this fella watched one too many episodes of stra trek and it made.. nay, forced him to commit these crimes.
Why won't someone think of the kiddies?
Mines the one with the mr fusion instructions in the pocket.
... which means it might have been a usable weapon, and should be taken seriously. If it had been a bat'leth, the offender would probably have been beaten to death by a 5-yo tetraplegic kid (possibly wearing a blindfold). As sharp as it might be, the, erm, "traditional Klingon weapon" is as dangerous as the lightsaber I bought from W*ll-M*rt last week. No wield=no velocity=superficial cuts at most (if your opponent is naked). Plus the absolute lack of balance of the thing makes it a tiresome bitch of a weapon to handle (even as a defensive weapon). The only remotely "dangerous" versions are the rubber replicas. Klingons might be fierce warriors, but they sure are brain-dead when it comes to weapon design.
Mine is the one with the chainwhip and the warhammer.
Australian Federal Police (AFP) commissioner Reece Kershaw has accused un-named nations of helping organized criminals to use technology to commit and launder the proceeds of crime, and called for international collaboration to developer technologies that counter the threats that behaviour creates.
Kershaw’s remarks were made at a meeting of the Five Eyes Law Enforcement Group (FELEG), the forum in which members of the Five Eyes intelligence sharing pact – Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the UK and the USA – discuss policing and related matters. Kershaw is the current chair of FELEG.
“Criminals have weaponized technology and have become ruthlessly efficient at finding victims,” Kerhsaw told the group, before adding : “State actors and citizens from some nations are using our countries at the expense of our sovereignty and economies.”
China’s Ministry of Public Security has revealed the five most prevalent types of fraud perpetrated online or by phone.
The e-commerce scam known as “brushing” topped the list and accounted for around a third of all internet fraud activity in China. Brushing sees victims lured into making payment for goods that may not be delivered, or are only delivered after buyers are asked to perform several other online tasks that may include downloading dodgy apps and/or establishing e-commerce profiles. Victims can find themselves being asked to pay more than the original price for goods, or denied promised rebates.
Brushing has also seen e-commerce providers send victims small items they never ordered, using profiles victims did not create or control. Dodgy vendors use that tactic to then write themselves glowing product reviews that increase their visibility on marketplace platforms.
David Harville, eBay's former director of global resiliency, pleaded guilty this week to five felony counts of participating in a plan to harass and intimidate journalists who were critical of the online auction business.
Harville is the last of seven former eBay employees/contractors charged by the US Justice Department to have admitted participating in a 2019 cyberstalking campaign to silence Ina and David Steiner, who publish the web newsletter and website EcommerceBytes.
Former eBay employees/contractors Philip Cooke, Brian Gilbert, Stephanie Popp, Veronica Zea, and Stephanie Stockwell previously pleaded guilty. Cooke last July was sentenced to 18 months behind bars. Gilbert, Popp, Zea and Stockwell are currently awaiting sentencing.
The US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday affirmed the 2019 conviction and sentencing of Carsten Igor Rosenow for sexually exploiting children in the Philippines – and, in the process, the court may have blown a huge hole in internet privacy law.
The court appears to have given US government agents its blessing to copy anyone's internet account data without reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing – despite the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable searches and seizures. UC Berkeley School of Law professor Orin Kerr noted the decision with dismay.
"Holy crap: Although it was barely mentioned in the briefing, the CA9 just held in a single sentence, in a precedential opinion, that internet content preservation isn't a seizure," he wrote in a Twitter post. "And TOS [Terms of Service] eliminate all internet privacy."
A now-former eBay security director accused of harassing a couple who wrote a critical newsletter about the internet tat bazaar is set to plead guilty to cyberstalking.
James Baugh, of San Jose, California, was charged with conspiracy to commit cyberstalking and conspiracy to tamper with witnesses, alongside six former colleagues in a baffling case brought in 2020.
Five of them pleaded guilty; Baugh and David Harville, eBay's now-ex-director of global resiliency, denied the allegations and were due to go on trial.
A former acting branch chief of IT for the US Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) oversight office was convicted on Monday of conspiring to steal US government software in order to develop a commercial copy that could be resold to other government agencies.
Murali Venkata, 56, of Aldie, Virginia, served as acting branch chief of the Information Technology Division of the DHS Office of the Inspector General (DHS-OIG). He was indicted in March 2020 alongside former acting inspector general of DHS-OIG Charles Edwards, 59, of Sandy Spring, Maryland.
Both men faced charges that they and others conspired to steal government property and to defraud the US, that they stole government property, and that they committed wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. Venkata also faced an additional charge that he destroyed records.
A now-former finance director stole tablet computers and other equipment worth $40 million from the Yale University School of Medicine, and resold them for a profit.
Jamie Petrone, 42, on Monday pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud and one count of filing a false tax return, crimes related to the theft of thousands of electronic devices from her former employer. As director of finance and administration in the Department of Emergency Medicine, Petrone, of Lithia Springs, Georgia, was able to purchase products for her organization without approval if the each order total was less than $10,000.
She abused her position by, for example, repeatedly ordering Apple iPads and Microsoft Surface Pro tablets only to ship them to New York and into the hands of a business listed as ThinkingMac LLC. Money made by this outfit from reselling the redirected equipment was then wired to Maziv Entertainment LLC, a now-defunct company traced back to Petrone and her husband, according to prosecutors in Connecticut [PDF].
Scammers appear to be targeting university students looking to kickstart their careers, according to research from cybersecurity biz Proofpoint.
From the department of "if it's too good to be true, it probably is" comes a study in which Proofpoint staffers responded to enticement emails to see what would happen.
This particular threat comes in the wake of COVID-19, with people open to working from home and so perhaps more susceptible. "Threat actors use the promise of easy money working from home to collect personal data, steal money, or convince victims to unwillingly participate in illegal activities, such as money laundering," the researchers said.
A former school IT technician who wiped his ex-employer's network but also the devices of children connected to it at the time has been sentenced – after telling a judge he was seeking a new career in cybersecurity.
Adam Georgeson, 29, went on the digital rampage after being dismissed by Welland Park Academy in Leicestershire, England, last January. He wiped 125 devices "including those belonging to 39 families", according to the Leicester Mercury.
The IT professional, of Robin Lane, Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, pleaded guilty to two crimes under the Computer Misuse Act 1990 last year.
A Canadian who used the Netwalker ransomware to attack 17 organisations and had C$30m (US$23.6m) in cash and Bitcoin when police raided his house has been jailed for more than six years.
Sebastien Vachons-Desjardins of Gatineau, Ottawa, was sentenced to six years and eight months in prison earlier this month after pleading guilty to five criminal charges in Ontario's Court of Justice.
"The Defendant excelled at what he did," sniffed Justice Paul Renwick in a sentencing note published on Canadian court document repository CanLII. "Between 10-15 unknown individuals hired the Defendant to teach them his methods. Some of these activities benefitted those interested in securing computer networks from these types of attacks. Some of the Defendant's students were likely other cyber threat actors."
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