ydebru's Last.fm Journal

I am worried about the recent increase seen in hacked accounts here & elsewhere.

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 01:29:54 +0000

Recently at last.fm, someone seems to have been able to get into user accounts, and make postings completely at odds with what the poster was known to do, when they were active @ last.fm.

Specifically, I noticed the account of the user 'obbrio' which has been in disuse for about 7 months, and now suddenly is posting shouts about about some promotion that sony is doing. Otherwise, there's no activity on that account, in other words, no scrobbling, et cetera.

Earlier this week, someone hacked into my facebook account, and although facebook locked my account until I changed my password, I find it worrying since I have used strong passwords on all accounts for the last 15 years online, and there have been no successful intrusions or hacks into my accounts, ever.
I am compelled to conclude that someone on the facebook side of things, ie, on their administrative side, accessed, permitted someone to access, or perhaps they were hacked into on the server and administrative side.

If I see more of this activity, I will be compelled to close my social networking accounts, since having that type of uncertainty with my online presence is intolerable.

What have you noticed?

What have you done about it?

I regret to feel this way, since I can say many good things about last.fm and facebook. But, perhaps it is a time for a positive change.

John Cleese: "To Norway, Home Of Giants"

Sun, 23 Aug 2009 00:50:04 +0000

&

Next week features Ecuador.

"Fear of Gravity" by The Cherry Bluestorms

Fri, 29 May 2009 19:10:47 +0000

Fidel Castro writes about John F. Kennedy

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 08:54:52 +0000

An Impressive Gesture

I confess that many times I have meditated on the dramatic story of John F. Kennedy. It was my fate to live through the era when he was the greatest and most dangerous adversary of the Revolution. It was something that didn’t play a part in his calculations. He saw himself as the representative of a new generation of Americans who were confronting the old-style, dirty politics of men of the sort of Nixon whom he had defeated with a tremendous display of political talent.

He had behind him his history as a combatant in the Pacific and of his adroit pen.

Because he was over-confident, he was dragged into the Bay of Pigs adventure by his predecessors, since he had no doubts about the experience and professional capacity of all those men. His failure was bitter and unexpected, a scant three months after his inauguration. Even though he was on the point of attacking the Island with his country’s powerful and sophisticated weaponry, on that occasion he didn’t do what Nixon would have done: use the fighter-bombers and land the Marines. Rivers of blood would have flowed in our Homeland where hundreds of thousands of combatants were ready to die. He controlled himself and came up with a categorical phrase that is hard to forget: "Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan."

His life continued to be dramatic, like a shadow that accompanied him at all times. On the strength of wounded pride, he again succumbed to the idea of invading us. This brought on the October [Missile] Crisis and the most serious risks of thermonuclear warfare that the world has ever known until the present day. He emerged from this test as an authority thanks to the mistakes of his chief adversary. He seriously wanted to talk with Cuba and that’s what he decided to do. He sent Jean Daniel to talk with me and return to Washington. His mission was being carried out at that moment when the news of President Kennedy’s assassination arrived. His death and the strange way in which it was orchestrated and carried out, was truly sad.

Later I met close family members who visited Cuba. I never mentioned the unpleasant aspects of his policy against our country, nor did I refer at all to the attempts to eliminate me. I met his son when he was an adult, who had been a young child when his father had been the president of the United States. We got together as friends. His own brother Robert was also assassinated, multiplying the drama shadowing that family.

At the distance of so many years, information arrived about a gesture that impressed me.

These days, while so much was being said about the lengthy and unfair blockade of Cuba in the upper echelons of the continent’s countries, I read a news item in Mexico’s La Jornada: "At the end of 1963, the then Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy sought to overturn the ban on travel to Cuba and today his daughter, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, wrote that President Barack Obama ought to take this into account and support legislative initiatives that would allow all Americans to travel to the island.

"In official documents declassified by the National Security Archive research centre it is recorded that on December 12, 1963, less than one month after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy sent a communication to Secretary of State Dean Rusk, urging the removal of regulations prohibiting Americans from traveling to Cuba…

"Robert Kennedy claimed that the prohibition violated American freedoms. According to the document, he affirmed that the current restrictions on travel are inconsistent with traditional American freedoms.

"…That position was unsuccessful inside the Lyndon B. Johnson administration and the State Department decided that to suspend the restrictions would be perceived as a softening of the Cuban policy and that they were part of the joint effort made by the United States and other American republics to isolate Cuba.

"In an editorial article by Kathleen Kennedy printed today in The Washington Post, Robert’s daughter expresses her wish that her father’s position be adopted by the Barack Obama government, and that this should be the position promoted by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. while the Obama government weighs the next step it will take with Cuba, one that should be pushing for allowing more than just Cuban-Americans to travel freely to the island and dealing with the rights of all Americans, most of whom are not free to go.

"Kathleen Kennedy writes that just as Obama found out at the summit meeting last week-end, Latin American leaders have adopted a coordinated message on Cuba: the time is here to normalize relations with Havana…By keeping on trying to isolate Cuba, they essentially told Obama, Washington has only succeeded in isolating itself.

"Thus, the niece of the president who attempted to invade and overthrow the Cuban Revolutionary government and impose the blockade, adds her voice now to the ever-growing chorus in favor of reversing these policies which were put in place half a century ago."

A worthy article by Kathleen Kennedy!

Fidel Castro Ruz

April 24, 2009

1:17 p.m.

Couple sentenced in Mother's Day stabbing of guitarist

Wed, 8 Oct 2008 17:56:17 +0000

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-poole8-2008oct08,0,811631.story

From the Los Angeles Times

Couple sentenced in Mother's Day stabbing of guitarist

Husband is given 15 years to life while his wife gets three years for fatal confrontation in diner parking lot over a near-accident with a restaurant employee.

By Jack Leonard

Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

October 8, 2008

Walking across the parking lot of a Hollywood diner, Roderick Poole was on his way to dinner with his wife on Mother's Day when a car backed out of a parking space and bumped into a restaurant worker standing nearby.

"Watch it!" Poole called out. The vehicle's driver apologized to the worker but exchanged angry words with Poole.

In the next few moments, the car's driver and her husband assaulted Poole before speeding off with their young son in the back seat, leaving the English-born guitarist lying in the parking lot clutching his stomach. Poole, 45, had been fatally stabbed.

On Tuesday, Poole's wife stood in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom and confronted the couple convicted in the killing, telling the court that her husband had not been looking for a fight that May 2007 evening but was trying to speak up for a stranger.

"He would speak for the underdog, he would speak for people who needed to be defended," Lisa Ladaw said as friends wept quietly in the audience behind her. "He was my best friend. He was my life."

During an emotional hearing, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Michael E. Pastor sentenced Michael and Angela Sheridan to separate prison terms, describing their actions as "cowardly" and unprovoked.

"The conduct is egregious beyond words," Pastor said as he sentenced Michael Sheridan to 15 years to life for second-degree murder. "The victim in this case, Mr. Poole, was particularly vulnerable at the time he was attacked brutally by Mr. Sheridan."

Michael Sheridan, 27, was accused of stabbing Poole with a wooden-handled steak knife. But Pastor described Sheridan's wife as the "provocateur" in the confrontation and sentenced her to three years in prison for involuntary manslaughter.

Minutes before receiving her sentence, Angela Sheridan, a 26-year-old file clerk at a downtown law firm, apologized for her actions. Sitting in dark blue jail scrubs with her hands cuffed behind her, she asked Poole's family for forgiveness and pleaded for leniency from the judge.

"I'm so sorry this has happened," she said, reading from a statement. "I never thought my decision to get out of the car would have such a tragic outcome."

Her defense attorney argued that her client had snapped that night because Poole called her "bitch," but she never intended to kill him.

Michael Sheridan, slim with short dark hair and a thin mustache, sat through the hearing in silence. His attorney told the judge that Sheridan had taken his wife, their son and his mother to Mel's Drive-In to celebrate Mother's Day that evening without any thought of violence.

Deputy Public Defender Alba N. Marrero said her client felt the need to act in defense of his family during the confrontation with Poole and did not deserve to be convicted of murder.

"We know no one takes the whole family somewhere on Mother's Day with the intention to kill," Marrero said.

Sandra Sheridan, Michael's mother, begged the judge to show mercy. She said she had been the one who suggested the family go to the Hollywood diner when her son offered to take her out for Mother's Day.

"You don't know how much I regret that," she said. "Mother's Day for me doesn't exist anymore because of this."

In the audience, friends of Poole bristled at one point when an aunt of Michael Sheridan told the court that Poole's wife should have shown better judgment and stopped her husband from intervening.

During the trial earlier this year, Deputy Dist. Atty. Steve Dickman presented security camera footage that showed Poole walking away from the Sheridans three times before the couple finally attacked him.

Witnesses said they heard Angela Sheridan tell him "I could kill you" several times before the assault began. And they testified they saw her hit Poole in the head and kick him while her husband appeared to punch him in the chest. An autopsy later showed Poole was stabbed six times.

Richard Grunauer, a former business partner of Poole, told the judge that his friend -- who was 5 feet, 10 inches tall and weighed 157 pounds -- would have posed no threat that evening.

"He was a skinny little English kid with a heart of gold," Grunauer said.

Several friends described Poole as a talented guitarist and a fixture of the Los Angeles experimental music scene who devoted his life to his wife and his craft. Grunauer said his friend's encyclopedic knowledge of jazz and blues had helped him make friends across the globe.

In the last two years before his death, Poole had stopped performing so that he could focus on composing.

"Rod was a pioneer of music," said his friend Jessica Catron. "He was developing an extremely complex and beautiful art form. . . . Because his life was cut short, the world will never know the importance of his music."

jack.leonard@latimes.com

John Cale on the game show "I've Got A Secret"

Mon, 7 Apr 2008 04:55:50 +0000

Co-creator of mambo, Cachao, dies in Miami

Sun, 23 Mar 2008 22:23:30 +0000

Co-creator of mambo, Cachao, dies in Miami

Last Updated: Saturday, March 22, 2008 | 4:14 PM ET

Israel (Cachao) Lopez, the Cuban musician regarded as the pioneer of mambo music, has died at age 89 in a Miami-area hospital.

Family spokesman Nelson Albareda revealed that Cachao, as he was popularly known, died early Saturday after falling ill in the past week. The Miami Herald reports the bassist died of complications from kidney failure.

Cuban bassist Cachao is credited with inventing mambo music with his brother Orestes in the late 1930s.

"It was not only a great musician who died, but a great senor — a gentleman," music producer Emilio Estefan of Miami Sound Machine, told the Herald.

"Even on his deathbed he would make sure his visitors felt at ease."

The bassist and composer was a Latin Grammy Award winner who was performing and recording until he could not get out of bed.

Cachao and his late brother Orestes are considered the originators of the late-1930s invention of mambo — dance music with rhythms derived from African folk music.

Cachao further broadened the popularity of Afro-Cuban music in 1957 when he gathered a group of musicians in the early morning hours after they had all played at Havana's nightclubs.

The resulting jam session in a recording studio would revolutionize the form as the musicians improvised and the spirit of Latin jazz blossomed.

Family of 40 bassists

Cachao was born to a family of musicians, about 40 of whom became bassists.

Classically-trained, he joined a children's septet as a bongo player and would later accompany superstar cabaret performer Ignacio Villa, known as Bola de Nieve, providing music for his Havana neighbourhood's silent cinema.

By his early teens, he was playing with the Orquesta Filarmonica de La Habana under guest conductors such as Igor Stravinsky and Herbert von Karajan.

Cachao would flee to the U.S. with many other Cuban exiles in the early 1960s, landing in Las Vegas because, as he admitted, he was a compulsive gambler.

Eventually his wife would insist they move away, but only after he had gambled away almost all his money.

Cachao would settle in Coral Gables, a Miami neighbourhood, and played at nightclubs, weddings and quinceaneras — Latin coming-of-age parties for teenage girls.

Actor Andy Garcia, who is also Cuban, helped widen Cachao's influence during the 1990s by producing recordings known as the Master Sessions and holding concerts in honour of the music legend.

About to work on new CD

Cachao kept working and headlined a massive concert in September 2007 in Miami, a week after the funeral of his friend and fellow musician, trombonist Generoso Jimenez.

He was in the Dominican Republic on March 9, days before being hospitalized, to receive a lifetime achievement award and was planning a European tour in August.

Cachao was also in pre-production for a CD of new compositions.

His wife of 58 years, Ester Buenaventura Lopez, died in 2004. Cachao is survived by a daughter and grandson.

My Favourite Person Who Isn't A Member Of This Group, Yet!

Wed, 12 Mar 2008 18:52:35 +0000

MrSONY!

http://tinyurl.com/2nuvzf

Mort Garson, 83; composer used Moog synthesizer

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 18:20:09 +0000

Mort Garson, 83; composer used Moog synthesizer

By Dennis McLellan

Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

January 11, 2008

As an arranger and conductor in the 1960s, Mort Garson worked on albums by artists such as Mel Torme, Joanie Sommers and Glenn Yarbrough.

As a composer, he wrote music for Mel Brooks' and Carl Reiner's 1975 animated television special "The 2000 Year Old Man," "The Untamed World" documentary series, game shows, movies and "Marilyn! the Musical," which debuted in London in 1983.

And teamed with lyricist Bob Hilliard, he co-wrote the 1963 Ruby and the Romantics hit "Our Day Will Come," which rose to No. 1 on national charts.

But it was his work as a composer using the then-new Moog synthesizer on a series of albums in the late 1960s and '70s that developed a cult following that continues today.

Garson died of renal failure Jan. 4 in a hospital in San Francisco, said his daughter, Day Darmet. He was 83.

"He gained his greatest underground loyal fans for all of his electronic creativity," Darmet said. "If you go on EBay, people are still trying to buy those albums."

Beginning with "The Zodiac: Cosmic Sounds" in 1967, Garson created numerous albums using the Moog synthesizer, including "Electronic Hair Pieces," a 1969 version of songs from the hit Broadway musical "Hair," and "Signs of the Zodiac," a 12-volume 1969 series featuring one album for each astrological sign.

Garson was making "The Zodiac: Cosmic Sounds" album for Elektra with writer Jacques Wilson when an orchestra member said he knew engineer Robert Moog, who had invented the first commercially available electronic music synthesizer a few years earlier.

"I met him, got interested in his invention and immediately put it in 'Zodiac' to add a sweetness to the sound," Garson told the Los Angeles Times in 1969.

"That was the first album ever to use the Moog synthesizer and a live orchestra together," said Bernie Krause, who was at the "Zodiac" recording session.

Krause said he and his music partner, Paul Beaver, had introduced the Moog synthesizer to pop music and film in Hollywood in 1967 and were selling the units and teaching classes on how to use them.

" 'Zodiac' is a very influential cult album from the '60s," said Trevor Pinch, co-author of "Analog Days: The Invention and Impact of the Moog Synthesizer," a 2002 book that featured a 1969 photograph of Garson and his Moog synthesizer on the cover.

" 'Zodiac' influenced all sorts of people, including the Moody Blues," Pinch said. "They came up with 'Nights in White Satin' after listening to 'Zodiac: Cosmic Sounds.' "

Garson said in the Times interview that he didn't use the Moog synthesizer in "a very sophisticated way" on the 1967 "Zodiac" album.

But by the time he and Wilson did the 1968 A&M album "The Wozard of Iz: An Electronic Odyssey" -- a hippie-style parody of "The Wizard of Oz" in which Dorothy proclaims that "Kansas isn't where it's at" -- he said he had learned most of the techniques.

"His albums were fabulous examples of New Age music and really kind of kicked off the New Age genre -- and they were enormously popular," Krause said. "It was part of the texture of the whole San Francisco flower scene and all the rest of it in the late '60s."

At the time of Garson's interview with The Times in July 1969, his Moog synthesizer music was about to be heard by millions of Americans who would be glued to their TV sets watching history in the making: the Apollo 11 mission to land on the moon.

At frequent intervals during coverage of the mission, CBS aired a 6 1/2 -minute commentary-free film produced by Chuck Braverman with music by Garson.

Garson completed the score for the film -- a doctored and edited version of NASA films from previous space flights -- in a week in the small studio in his home in the Hollywood Hills.

"The only sounds that go along with space travel are electronic ones," he told The Times. "The Apollo film shows different facets of the flight -- blastoff, separation of the stages of the rocket, scenes of the moon at close range, of the astronauts playing games in the ship and of earthrise."

The music, he said, "has to carry the film along. It has to echo the sound of the blastoff and even the static you hear on the astronauts' report from space. People are used to hearing things from outer space, not just seeing them.

"So I used a big, symphonic sound for the blastoff, some jazzy things for the zero-G game of catch, psychedelic music for a section that uses negatives and diffuse colors on shots taken inside the ship, and a pretty melody for the moon. After all, it's still a lovely moon."

Born July 20, 1924, in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada, Garson attended the Juilliard School of Music and was a pianist and arranger with dance orchestras before serving in Special Services during World War II.

He most recently composed a suite of music about San Francisco, his home since 1993.

"He was just putting the finishing touches on it," Darmet said. "We were going to digitally record it; we still will."

In addition to his daughter, he is survived by a grandson.

A graveside service will be held at 11 a.m. Saturday at Forest Lawn Memorial-Park, 6300 Forest Lawn Drive, Los
Angeles.

Stockhausen Ist Tot

Fri, 7 Dec 2007 19:57:06 +0000

Stockhausen Is Dead

Karlheinz Stockhausen, whose electronic works made him one of Germany's most important postwar composers, has died, German state broadcaster ZDF reported Friday. He was 79.

Stockhausen, who gained fame with avant-garde compositions in the 1960s and '70s and later moved to huge music theater and other projects, died Wednesday, ZDF said, citing the Stockhausen Music Foundation. It gave no cause of death.

Stockhausen's electronic compositions are a radical departure from musical tradition and incorporate influences as varied as psychology, the visual arts and the acoustics of a particular concert hall.

He provoked controversy in 2001 after describing the Sept. 11 attacks as "the greatest work of art one can imagine" during a news conference in the northern German city of Hamburg, where several of the hijackers had lived.

The composer later apologized for his remarks, but the city still canceled performances of his works.