Author Archives: Joe

Quote of the day–Bruce Schneier

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For a while I’ve been saying that this whole national ID debate will be irrelevant soon. In the future you won’t have to show ID; they’ll already know who you are.

Bruce Schneier
September 26, 2007
The Technology of Homeland Security
[It was this article that inspired the above comment. My comment to Schneier’s article was:

I used to specialize in biometrics and was underwhelmed at the actual capabilities compared to the marketing hype. And that was with people that weren’t even actively engaged in trying to defeat the technology. If someone really wants to defeat it the odds of success are very close to 100%.

“Novelty” contact lens easily defeat iris scans. Remote fingerprint scanning can be defeated with Band-Aids (or just the sticky tape part of it). More sophisticated/determined people will use contact lens with someone else’s iris pattern and be wearing someone else’s fingerprints.

The bottom line is that for the average person they might be able to know who you are and where you have been. Great information to use against your political opponents and for stalkers with access to the databases but useless for stopping smart and determined criminals.–Joe]

Gun porn–Saiga 12

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I probably will get in trouble, as I have before, for using the word “porn” in the same post with one of my daughters. But I’m 300 miles away at the moment and figure everyone will have enough time to cool off before I get home.

Anyway, on Saturday I took some pictures of our daughter Kim as she checked out a Saiga-12 with a 10-round detachable magazine:

Caleb, my son-in-law, says he always listens to Kim and does what she tells him to. I think she was telling him to do something when I took that last picture above…

Halo 3 propaganda

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Speaking of propaganda… I received an email at work yesterday saying something to the effect that the Halo 3 release will be the biggest release event in entertainment history. At least that is what I remember it saying. I don’t pay that much attention to games or publicity events.

What struck me was the number of copies they have ordered for employees. At the Redmond company store alone they brought in 25,000 copies. There will be additional shuttles from all over the main campus to the company store to help alleviate the parking issues that would result if people tried to drive themselves.

I asked James when he was going to pick up his copy. He told me that he pre-ordered his a year ago at some retail outlet so he could get some special edition version. Wow…

I stopped off at the company store yesterday at lunch time to pick up some software for Caleb. He told me no big hurry but I just know the store will be a madhouse the rest of this week. I saw a big empty space in the middle of the store where I expect the product will be stacked when it opens later this morning.

I also saw some Halo 3 hats on the shelf:

Yearning for Joseph Goebbels

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Instead of addressing the deficiencies or giving it up as a bad idea they are hiring “public relations” consultants to convince the people a national ID card is a good thing. Why don’t they be honest about it and go for the tattoo on the forearm or the RFID chip under the skin? Of course they probably would need Joseph Goebbels reincarnated to get that “PR” campaign off the ground.

Details are here:

As controversy rages over forthcoming federal Real ID requirements, state officials should be plotting public relations strategies to counteract the well-publicized rebellion, past and present state motor vehicle administrators advised their colleagues Monday.

Civil liberties and privacy groups, as well as organizations like the National Governors Association, have attacked the 2005 law as insufficiently protective of privacy and too costly to implement. But that’s exactly the sort of message motor vehicle departments need to offset with their own materials trumpeting the plan’s perceived benefits, suggested Lucinda Babers, interim director of the District of Columbia DMV, and Betty Serian, a retired Pennsylvania Department of Transportation official who now runs a private consulting firm.

“I think it’s a classical textbook case of good communications planning, knowing who your audience is, and working that into your implementation plan for Real ID,” Serian said during a panel discussion on the first day of the Government ID Technology Summit here. About 100 state and federal officials and representatives from technology vendors were in attendance.

The Department of Homeland Security plans to issue final rules in the fall, but draft rules say that starting on May 11, 2008, Americans will need a federally approved, “machine readable” ID card to travel on an airplane, open a bank account, collect Social Security payments or take advantage of nearly any government service. (States that agree in advance to abide by the rules have until 2013 to comply.)

[…]

But even those states that fall into the anti-Real ID category should be thinking about how to make their residents feel happier about the requirements, the conference speakers said.

Sample messages could include, according to Serian: “It’s an improvement to your existing process, it’s a way to do the right things for the right reason, it will help prevent identity theft.”

They admit they have to make their residents feel happier. I’ve heard “arbeit macht frei” too. Do you feel happier now?

Quote of the day–Joseph Goebbels

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That propaganda is good which leads to success, and that is bad which fails to achieve the desired result. It is not propaganda’s task to be intelligent, its task is to lead to success.

Joseph Goebbels
Fest, The Face of the Third Reich, 90
[Does this remind you of any politicians and/or media outlets in the present day?–Joe]

They just don’t get it

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I suppose its to be expected. You can’t get more government contracts if you were to tell them the problem cannot be solved as long as they are headed in that direction. But what you can do is sell them millions and millions of dollars of technology that can be defeated with a few dollars worth of mu-metal and/or a Faraday Shield. I guess it doesn’t matter. It’s just government money. They have to spend it on something anyway, right?

Here are the details:

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has a comforting prospect for the million or so daily passengers on U.S. airlines. Los Alamos National Laboratory is working on an alternative to the “sandwich bag” solution for carry-on liquids.

Passengers’ ability to carry liquids with them during boarding has improved since the original total ban installed after a plot involving liquid explosives on transatlantic flights was busted in London in August 2006.

A total ban has given way to a partial ban because current X-ray machines can detect liquids, but they don’t know the difference between Gatorade and a liquid explosive.

But the so-called “3-1-1” plan for placing smaller-than-3-ounce liquid containers into one separately scanned, quart-size plastic bag per passenger remains an annoyance for many airport travelers, a fact that has not been lost on the department.

Within a month after the London scheme was foiled, said Michelle Espy, LANL’s co-principal investigator on the project, the laboratory had sketched out a “proof of concept” for a liquid-sensing instrument that has come to be called SENSIT.

In May this year, Brian Tait, a program manager in the Homeland Security Advanced Research Project Agency made a presentation on LANL’s demonstration for using magnetic resonance technology to perform non-invasive “liquid and solid explosive detection at ultra-low field without radiation.”

Espy said the technology is a variation on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), a very low-field approach that the lab has been using for studying the brain in a technique known as magneto-encephalography, which is a way of reading signals emanating from the brain.

The sensor or magnetometer used in both the brain study and the bottle analyzer is known as a SQUID, an acronym that stands for Superconducting Quantum Interfering Device.

Comforting? I suppose you could say that. It will give some people a false sense of comfort. But then that’s what TSA is all about anyway. A Security Theater that makes some people feel good.

VPC stops by to visit

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Nice of them to stop by.

Domain Name   e-nt.net ? (Network)
IP Address   66.7.41.# (Violence Policy Center)
ISP   eLink Communications
Location  
Continent  :  North America
Country  :  United States  (Facts)
State  :  District of Columbia
City  :  Washington
Lat/Long  :  38.9068, -77.0427 (Map)
Distance  :  2,071 miles
Language   English (U.S.)
en-us
Operating System   Microsoft WinXP
Browser   Internet Explorer 7.0
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)
Javascript   version 1.3
Monitor  

Resolution  :  1024 x 768
Color Depth  :  32 bits

Time of Visit   Sep 24 2007 2:34:51 pm
Last Page View   Sep 24 2007 2:41:17 pm
Visit Length   6 minutes 26 seconds
Page Views   3
Referring URL http://blogsearch.go… Center%22&scoring=d
Search Engine blogsearch.google.com
Search Words “violence policy center”
Visit Entry Page   https://blog.joehuffman.org/2007/09/20/quote-of-the-day-cam-edwards/
Visit Exit Page   https://blog.joehuffman.org/2006/10/
Out Click   What A Tangled Web They Weave
http://www.camedwards.com/2007/09/19/what-a-tangled-web-they-weave/
Time Zone   UTC-5:00
Visitor’s Time   Sep 24 2007 5:34:51 pm
Visit Number   194,160

Since I now that I know their IP address I also went looking through old log files for them. They visited in March after doing a blog search for “Josh Sugarman”. Then they were here a couple times in August looking for stuff about Larry Craig. For more details see: VPCVisits.xls (28 KB)

Comment problems

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People have been having problems with the anti-spam feature in comments. I’ve disabled the Captcha and enable some other things in an attempt to mitigate the resultant spam. I need to dig into the source code and fix the Captcha and other problems but I just haven’t gotten around to it.

If you have been frustrated by the comment issues please try again. I really like getting comments and don’t want you to give up on it.

Steel match pictures

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Joe (a different Joe) ROs Don as he blasts through a stage. Yes, Joe’s shirt says “INFIDEL” on the back (and the front).


That’s Adam with the “air gun” practicing for the next stage.

 
As I mentioned in the QOD yesterday Xenia’s boyfriend John went with me to the match.

 
Michelle and Adam as he ROs while she shoots a few rounds.

We also had an anthropology grad student, Michelle, from Washington State University show up. I asked if she knew “Joan”, an anthropologist from WSU who has studied the gun culture. She claims to not know Joan Burbick (and here and here). Michelle has only been in town for a few weeks having just arrived from Iowa. She also said she is a Evolutionary Anthropologist while Joan is probably a Cultural Anthropologist which means they wouldn’t be as likely to meet each other. Since I was wrong about Joan being an anthropologist it’s quite believable.

We managed to talk her into shooting a little bit. She also claims to have only fired one gun on one occasion. Had it not been for her poor posture while shooting I, and probably everyone else, would not have believed her. In her first six shots I think she only had one miss. She did amazingly well for a completely new shooter. She emptied two magazines out of two different guns and didn’t develop a flinch which is quite common with new shooters with a fairly large caliber handgun.

I spent several minutes talking to her and answering questions. The questions had some anti-gun bias and I finally asked what her sort of opinion she had on guns. She said as anthropological observer she was not allowed to have an opinion.

Quote of the day–Joan Burbick

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People in a society find ways to avoid conflict, and instead they find substitutes for it. I think the gun has become one of those substitutes.

Instead of addressing the root causes of the inequalities in our society, such as the limits of access to education, jobs, housing, the legal system etc., we invent or come up with crime scenarios. The gun becomes the substitute way to solve conflict in the United States, and the biggest conflict of all is crime.

So that’s how I view it as a political fetish — that it’s a substitution. This is a moment in the United States when access to political power is, I think, limited to a class of professional politicians and lobbyists. And the act of buying a gun can mimic political action. It makes people feel as if they are engaging in politics of political protest.

I’ll give an example of how I think guns have political meaning. One of my old friends who is an ex-Vietnam vet, a Navy pilot, said to me one night, “Whenever I get mad at the government, I go out and buy a gun.” And to me, that’s a form of mimicking political action. One is left only with a gun in one’s closet. One has not changed or affected the government at all. In that way, I see it as a fetish, a substitute.

Joan Burbick
October 16, 2006
Joan Burbick’s ‘Gun Show Nation’ Explains How the “Gun Rights” Movement is a White Male Political Power Play
[Just so you know what they think of you.–Joe]

Hitler analogy

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Every time I hear or read something about Mahmoud Ahmadinejad coming to the U.S. to address Columbia University I keep thinking this is going to go down in history the same as if Adolf Hitler had come to the U.S. to address some university in September of 1937.

Quote of the day–Greg Hamilton

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If fact the whole culture of certain units is competition. They shoot “matches” quals, standards, stages, etc all the time. In that world everything is graded and the results posted for all to see.

These guys could be very good competition shooters, instead they are very good at killing our enemies.

Greg Hamilton
September 18, 2007 8:34 PM
[Greg teaches military, law enforcement, and private citizens how to shoot. He is very, very good. Not just at shooting but at teaching, thinking, understanding what he is doing, and explaining it.

On a related note–Xenia’s boyfriend just came back from “playing in the sandbox”. He went to a steel match with me today. His shooting has improved considerably since the last time we went to the range together. I still did better than he did, but he did make me proud. I should have some pictures up soon.–Joe]

I wonder what Battelle Columbus is up to

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The jerks at PNNL I used to work for report back to Battelle headquarters in Columbus Ohio. It appears I just had a visit from them:

Domain Name   rr.com ? (Commercial)
IP Address   65.24.154.# (Road Runner)
ISP   Road Runner
Location  
Continent  :  North America
Country  :  United States  (Facts)
State  :  Ohio
City  :  Columbus
Lat/Long  :  39.9968, -82.9882 (Map)
Distance  :  1,755 miles
Language   English (U.S.)
en-us
Operating System   Microsoft WinNT
Browser   Internet Explorer 7.0
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0; WOW64; SLCC1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.04506; Media Center PC 5.0)
Javascript   version 1.3
Monitor  

Resolution  :  1280 x 800
Color Depth  :  16 bits

Time of Visit   Sep 22 2007 12:53:04 pm
Last Page View   Sep 22 2007 1:10:13 pm
Visit Length   17 minutes 9 seconds
Page Views   9
Referring URL http://search.live.c…uffman.org&FORM=USNO
Search Engine search.live.com
Search Words blog.joehuffman.org
Visit Entry Page   http://cc.msnscache….lang=en-US&FORM=CVRE
Visit Exit Page   http://blog.joehuffm…w,category,PNNL.aspx
Out Click   a story which was published today
http://www.tri-cityh…58717p-9075291c.html
Time Zone   UTC-5:00
Visitor’s Time   Sep 22 2007 3:53:04 pm
Visit Number   193,489

Machine gun interest

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I never was one who was interested in fast or flashy cars. Vehicles, to me, are a means to transport people and things from point A to point B. I once had a long series of conversations with this guy named Walter about cars and women. He figured that a nice car was essential to finding a nice woman. He drove a Mercedes when I first met him. Then it was some sort of flashy looking muscle car. I forget the make and model. I just don’t pay attention to that sort of thing. Then after he hit it big he bought a brand new, bright red, Ferrari. Within a day or so after buying it he came over to my place to show it off. “That’s nice Walter.” I just wasn’t interested. And when we went for a ride I couldn’t sit up straight. It was extremely uncomfortable for me. I just can’t see the point. The only way I could see getting something that “over the top” is if it were REALLY over the top. If it could spread wings and fly at 300 MPH then I could see the appeal. But to be merely 50% faster than an ordinary car just seems pointless to me.

I feel the same way about machine guns. I just don’t get the appeal. I’ve shot them a few times. And sure, they put a lot of lead down range in a short period of time but so what? I can put more pieces of lead on target with a semi-auto in any realistic situation that I can imagine myself being in. There isn’t even someone like Walter who could plausibly argue that machine guns will attract the babes–so what is the appeal? I really don’t get it.

That said, I just saw the analog in the machine gun world of the car that can spread wings and fly at 300 MPH.

I told Barb this is what I want for Christmas:

Video: VIP Protection Tool

P.S. After a decade of faster and faster, flasher and flasher cars Walter eventually did find a woman that would marry him. Barb and I always figured it would be a gold-digger that took him for a ride since that seemed to be what he was advertising for. But the reports I got back (he is on my “every time I see his face I involuntarily start to draw my gun” list now) is that she appeared to be an alcoholic instead.

Quote of the day–John Gilmore

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We have to realize that people who run the government can and do change.  Our society and laws must assume that bad people – criminals even – will run the government, at least part of the time.

John Gilmore
A transcript of remarks given at the First Conference on Computers, Freedom, and Privacy, March 28,1991
[Gilmore’s primary concern is privacy. He is a big name in the opposition to a national ID card, unreasonable search and seizure, etc. But the justification for that concern, as stated above, is also applicable to being opposed to restrictions on firearms.–Joe]

In Boston, of course

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Of course it was in Boston where the cops all went bonkers because someone was carrying around some wires and LEDs (via Bruce):

Star Simpson was charged with possessing a hoax device today at Logan International Airport for wearing a sweatshirt that had a circuit board affixed to the front with green LED lights and wires running to a 9-volt battery.

This is not a bomb:

And furthermore, being the nit-picky engineer that I am, it’s a breadboard, not a circuit board.

If someone wanted to carry a bomb around at the airport they would almost for certain put it in a suitcase instead of wearing it in the open on their sweatshirt. And since it was in the open you can easily see there is no detonator and no explosives attached. But this is Boston. And so:

Outside the terminal, Simpson was surrounded by police holding machine guns.

“She was immediately told to stop, to raise her hands, and not make any movement so we could observe all her movements to see if she was trying to trip any type of device,” Pare said at a press conference at Logan. “There was obviously a concern that had she not followed the protocol … we may have used deadly force.”

Simpson was arrested…

Bruce says Refuse to be Terrorized. I say Boston was just exercising their authority as a police state. And the police probably hadn’t gotten to play with the sub-guns in weeks. They had to justify having their toys by actually pointing them as someone occasionally.

I do agree with Bruce that the true terrorists are probably laughing at us.

Complete Heinlein archives online

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Wow. It’s ALL here.

Too bad everything costs money to view.

Quote of the day–H. L. Mencken

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Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.

H. L. Mencken
[I keep thinking there has got to be a better system. The competing political systems of today are a minimum of 100 years old. Our communication technology, mass media, and perhaps other technology surely make some sort of new freedom based political system viable rather than enhancing a police state. But what is it?–Joe]

Bigoted Moscow Idaho Mayor is told by AG to back off

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Just today I received a copy of the letter the Idaho Attorney General sent to the Moscow City Attorney.

If you recall our Mayor wanted to ban guns in public places. The AG told her in legalize via the Moscow City Attorney to not even try going there.

I wish he had warned she was dangerously close to committing a felony but that is expecting too much even for Idaho in today’s political climate. We need to work on that for a few more years first.

Robyn Ringler stopped by again

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Domain Name   verizon.net ? (Network)
IP Address   68.236.146.# (Verizon)
ISP   Verizon Internet Services
Location  
Continent  :  North America
Country  :  United States  (Facts)
State  :  New York
City  :  Rexford
Lat/Long  :  42.843, -73.8583 (Map)
Distance  :  2,105 miles
Language   English (U.S.)
en-us
Operating System   Microsoft WinME
Browser   Internet Explorer 5.5
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows 98; Win 9x 4.90)
Javascript   version 1.3
Monitor  

Resolution  :  800 x 600
Color Depth  :  16 bits

Time of Visit   Sep 20 2007 5:57:21 pm
Last Page View   Sep 20 2007 5:57:21 pm
Visit Length   0 seconds
Page Views   1
Referring URL http://blogs.timesun…/underfire/wp-admin/
Visit Entry Page   http://blog.joehuffm…ppedByAFewTimes.aspx
Visit Exit Page   http://blog.joehuffm…ppedByAFewTimes.aspx
Out Click    
Time Zone   UTC-5:00
Visitor’s Time   Sep 20 2007 8:57:21 pm
Visit Number   193,023

 Previous visits were documented here.