I have tears coming down my cheeks from laughing.  This is so funny to me.  A bunch of kids doing something dangerous--following the law.

People with Asperger get annoyed, angry even, with people who don't follow the rules.  To have other people get angry because someone else is following the law and inconveniencing the law breakers is just so sweet.

Thanks to Sean who sent it to me with the subject line "More hope for today's youth."

Long story made short: There is a new version of Modern Ballistics available here.

Long story made long:  As many of you know I wrote the exterior ballistics program Modern Ballistics.  I had the free demo require a license to be updated once a month by contacting server which kept track of how many computers were using the demo.  The user interface to the server had a limit of 100 computers using any copy of the software at a time.  It turned out that more than 100 people were using the demo in a month and new users couldn't test out the software.  This happened just as I moved everything to a new computer and was in the middle of converting my code to use a new compiler.  I had deleted the old compiler off the old computer and I had no way to fix the problem people were having.  Last night (early this morning actually) I got the new build of the program tested.  To get things out quicker I just made the demo not require connecting to the server at all.  Then I had to update the installation process and test it.  Then I had to update the website.  I finished up about 0200 this morning.  Download the latest version here.

Let me know if you run into any bugs. The testing was rather "thin".  In particular I am concerned about it working on various operating systems.  I only tested it on Windows XP and XP-x64.  I have a Win98 and Win95 available at home but I'm not home now.  Send an email to bugs@modernballistics.com if you notice something broken.  Thanks.

I'm not praticularily surprised to see the average barking moonbat saying guns used in a murder are going to hell.  But when the leader of a nation says "they're evil" you have to wonder what kind of insanity has taken hold of an entire nation.  The story is here:

PRIME Minister John Howard tightened gun laws after the Port Arthur massacre because he did not want Australia going down the same path as the US, he said today.

Mr Howard, on the eve of his 10th anniversary in office, said today the nation's grief over the 1996 Port Arthur massacre had been a great opportunity to tighten Australia's gun laws.

"I would call that very definitely an extraordinary outpouring of amazement and grief in this country and I knew out of that there was an opportunity to grab the moment and think about a fundamental change to gun laws in this country," he told the Nine Network.

Mr Howard said he did not want Australia to adopt the American stance on guns.

"I did not want Australia to go down the American path," he said.

"There are some things about America I admire and there are some things I don't.

"And one of the things I don't admire about America is their ... slavish love of guns. They're evil."

And you, mister Prime Minister, are irrational.  Answer Just One Question.

And one of the things I don't admire about America is their ... slavish love of guns. They're evil.

John Howard
Prime Minister of Australia
March 01, 2006
The Australian

A free press can of course be good or bad, but, most certainly, without freedom it will never be anything but bad.... Freedom is nothing else but a chance to be better, whereas enslavement is a certainty of the worse.

Albert Camus

The power of Liberty is often called depravity by those who do not possess it.

Lyle Keeney
Comment on The View From North Central Idaho
February 27, 2006

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those who do not possess it.

George Bernard Shaw
[I'm thinking of the crisis the world has with Islamic extremists.--Joe]

I need to find the actual report or at least other news stories on it but this is a nice teaser on the subject:

WASHINGTON: A new study has revealed the mystery behind lovers getting more sexual satisfaction after intercourse than masturbation.

Following an orgasm, the hormone prolactin is released into the bloodstream in both men and women. The hormone makes one feel satiated by countering the effect of dopamine, which is released during sexual arousal.

Stuart Brody of the University of Paisley, UK, and Tillmann Kriger of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, measured blood prolactin levels in male and female volunteers who watched erotic films before engaging in masturbation or sexual intercourse to orgasm in the laboratory.

Surprisingly, after orgasm from sexual intercourse, the increase in blood prolactin levels is 400 per cent higher in both sexes compared with after orgasm from masturbation.

This explains why orgasm from intercourse is more satisfying than masturbation, says Brody. Since elevated levels of prolactin have been linked to erectile dysfunction, this may also explain why most men need a recovery period after sex.

I wonder how long it will be before there is a recreational drug on the market that mimics this?  I think there is a business opportunity here.  I've never used a drug, legal or illegal, recreationally.  But there certainly are a lot of people that do.

I got a call from our son James yesterday.  He had just finished taking the Graduate Record Exam (GRE).  Except for the essay portion they get the results back immediately afterwards.  He got a 560/800 on the verbal portion and 800/800 on the quantitative portion.  This is particularily noteworthy because it is an online, adaptive test.  The questions presented get harder if you are getting them all correct or easier if you are having difficulties with them.  He said it was "brutal".  He just barely finished the problems in the time given.  He was pretty "up" about things though--as well he should be.  We are very proud of him.

Another post from someone I used to work with at Microsoft.  Craig was my lead when I first started at Microsoft.  Here he gives the early history of DirectX.  I started in May of '95 and was responsible for the Cirrus chips for DirectX 1.  I took the summer off to be with my wife and kids for the summer of '96 and just barely had contact with DirectX 3.  But I was involved with 2 and 5. 

The "military coat" Craig talks about is a black M-65 field jacket.  I still have my DirectX jacket in my closet with the patches.  Ry and I now wear black M-65 jackets with Boomershoot embroidered on them.

Some of the patches for the various versions of DirectX had the project names on them.  Some of the project names were Manhattan (DirectX 1 was to "compete" with the Japanese game machines), Orion (reference to nuclear explosion powered space travel), and Orange (as in Agent Orange used in Vietnam to defoliate the jungle).  I think it was DirectX 6 that had the project name of "Diesel".  This was a veiled reference to ammonium nitrate/diesel mixture which was believed (nitromethane was the actual fuel) to be used in the then recent bombing of the Federal building in Oklahoma City.  Another time I will tell you of the mementos I made of ammonium nitrate for people on the project and shipped to Raymond to distribute.

See also Renegades of the Empire for DirectX history and lots of stories about Alex, Craig, and Eric.

Update: Fixed the broken link to Craigs post on DirectX history.

The more laws and order are made prominent, the more thieves and robbers there will be.

Lao Tsu
[In the more narrow context of "gun crime" this is also true.  The more restrictions on firearms the more useful they are to criminals and the more likely they are to use them.  If all potential victims were armed the criminals would be more likely to avoid situations where they could be shot.--Joe]

Via an old friend from Microsoft.  A work safe comedy video that probably hits a little "too close to home" for a lot of people I know.

...the Noam Chomskys and Michael Moores and Robert Fisks of the world (and their thousands of lesser imitators in faculty lounges everywhere) are not brave transgressive forward-thinkers but pathetic memebots running the program of a dead tyrant.

Eric Steven Raymond (ESR)
Gramscian damage
[ESR doesn't just claim this.  He proves it.  Great blog posting.--Joe]

Chances are, if you're ever going to be involved in a home defense situation with a shotgun, you'll be in your birthday-suit.  So unless you've got ammunition Velcro'd to your ass, all the extra ammunition you'll have will be on the gun.

Greg Hamilton
Self Defense Instructor
March 7, 1999

So congress says the Clean Water Act applies to all U.S. navigable water.  Okay, I can see them getting authority from the interstate commerce clause.  But then the Corp of Engineers and the EPA have their way with things:

The dispute is one of two cases consolidated for oral argument Tuesday examining just how far upstream the Clean Water Act (CWA) extends federal jurisdiction. Is it limited to lakes and rivers? Or does it include remote wetlands with no link to them? At stake: how broadly the clean water law will be applied nationwide and, potentially, whether a broad application of the law is consistent with the proper constitutional balance of power between the federal government and the states.

At the center of the dispute is a discrepancy between the words Congress used when it wrote the CWA and the regulations the US Army Corps of Engineers and Environmental Protection Agency wrote later to enforce the clean water law.

Congress said US jurisdiction would extend over all "navigable waters." EPA and Corps of Engineers regulations interpret the law as extending far upstream, even to waters with no hydrologic connection to a tributary of navigable waters.

"Through this authority, the Corps will effectively exercise a wide-ranging federal police power over all kinds of land use," writes Carabell's lawyer, Timothy Stoepker, in his brief to the court. "A saturated portion of a residential lawn, which is near a storm drain ... will come within the scope of the act, and the owners of such land will have to obtain permits from the Corps before making a variety of ordinary land-use decisions."

So what definition of navigable water can you come up with that includes a saturated portion of a residential lawn?  This is government WAY out of control.

I'm not sure why, but this makes me a little sad:

AN era of aviation history has drawn to a close with the US-made F-14 Tomcat fighter plane - the one flown into the danger zone by Tom Cruise in the film Top Gun - being withdrawn from active service.

The Tomcat is going into mothballs because advances in military technology have made its greatest attribute - the ability to manoeuvre at high speeds and in close combat situations - redundant.

Fighter planes no longer need such abilities because they don't dogfight any more. Instead, pilots shoot at each other with target-seeking rockets, sometimes from 20km away.

The Tomcats were officially retired from service last week, replaced by FA-18 Super Hornets that are cheaper to maintain, easier to operate from aircraft carriers and able to carry more bombs.

The F-14 requires nearly 50 maintenance hours for every flight hour compared to five to 10 hours maintenance for the FA-18.

The F-14 entered operational service in 1974 when two squadrons were assigned to the USS Enterprise, replacing F-4 Phantom fighters that were eventually phased out in 1986.

...

The Tomcat was designed in the Cold War era to be the world's best fighter-interceptor. Its primary task was to defend aircraft carriers against cruise missile-armed Soviet aircraft.

I thought they were deployed to deliver a particularly heavy missile.  But I forget the exact details and don't really keep up on this sort of thing.  I just marvel at the capabilities and the engineering.

I think this is a train wreck waiting to happen.

Mike Machado
California State Senator
Talking about "Real ID" which is expected by most to be a real mess.
[For expense think about the Canadian gun registry on steroids.  Plus it can't possibly achieve it's intended goals.--Joe]

Xenia had four days off from school this weekend so Barb took some time off too and visited me in Kirkland rather than me driving home to Moscow this weekend while James and the two attack dogs and two flesh eating cats guarded the Huffman-Scott compound.  Yesterday was mostly consumed with shopping at "thrift stores."  It always seems to me it would be much more thrifty to not go shopping at all, but that argument is always met with such a clamor that I seldom bring it up regardless of the unassailable logic.  We had lunch at a Japanese buffet which was very nice.  Today we visited the Seattle Center and had lunch in the restaurant at the top of the Space Needle.

Pictures are here.

Update: Xenia posted some more pictures.

Here's what the public thinks:

(Angus Reid Global Scan) – Many adults in the United States believe the current regulations regarding firearms are adequate, according to a poll by Rasmussen Reports. 52 per cent of respondents believe the U.S. does not need stricter gun control laws.

...

Polling Data

Does the U.S. need stricter gun control laws?

Yes	39%
No	52%

Source: Rasmussen Reports
Methodology: Telephone interviews with 1,000 American adults, conducted on Feb. 14 and Feb. 15, 2006. Margin of error is 3 per cent.

Here's what's on the agenda for Congress (from Volume 3, Issue 1, January/February 2006 Firearms Coalition, Hard Corps Report):

1. Limit Revocation of Gun Rights to Violent Felons Only
2. Repeal Interstate Sales Ban, NICS makes it Obsolete
3. Require the Return of Recovered Firearms to their Rightful Owners
4. Repeal the Federal "Gun-Free School Zone Act" with its Many Potential Pitfalls for Innocent Gun Owners
5. Repeal the Useless 1986 Machine Gun Ban
6. Repeal GCA '68 "Sporting Purposes Language
7. Removed Useless Restrictions on Silencers so these Useful Tools can be Employed to Make Shooting Safer
8. Reform NICS Instant Check to Guarantee Timely Sales

The Democrats are fractured over gun control.  The Canadian Gun registry is about to be scrapped.  New Orleans.  The list goes on.

Keep up the pressure.  Drive these bigots into political extinction.

The mere absence of war is not peace.

John F. Kennedy