Category Archives: Technology

Lawrence Johnston

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A few years ago a friend of mine and I were talking about nuclear bombs and he said something about all the scientists involved with the development of “The Bomb” were now dead. I told him, “No. Johnston is still alive.” “Who is Johnston?” Johnston, I told him, was the guy that invented the detonators. After the war he was a physics professor at the University of Idaho and still lives in Moscow. I’m not sure my friend really believed me. Why would someone with a background like that end up in a backwater college like the U of I? I disputed this. The U of I has done quite well for itself and has nothing to be ashamed of—well, except for perhaps Larry “Wide Stance” Craig. Other famous graduates or professors include Sarah Palin in the class of 1987, Dan O’Brien (class of ’93), and Margrit Von Braun (daughter of Wernher von Braun).


Back to Johnston—I got my undergraduate degree at the U of I and took several physics classes there. But none of them were with Johnston even though he was there at the time (’67 –> ’88). But I would occasionally see mention of him in the news and I was proud to have him in my home town.


Last week wife and physical therapist Barbara called me up and excitedly asked me, “Do you know who I have as my patient?” “No. You don’t tell me that information unless you get permission from the patient and you haven’t done that for several weeks now.” My taking her literally somehow didn’t damping her spirits as it usually does and she went on to tell me that it was one of the scientist who worked on the first atomic bomb. “Johnston?”, I asked. “Yes. How did you know?”, her spirits finally dampened a tad. “Because he is the only one left and he lives in Moscow”, I explained.


She went on to tell me he gave her permission to talk to me about him, he was a really nice guy, is 92 years old, is the only person to have witnessed all three of the first atomic bomb explosions (he was in the observation planes over Hiroshima and Nagasaki), and he would be interested to exchange email with me. “Uhhh…. WOW!” was about all I could say.


I did exchange email with him and he sent me a presentation he made at Los Alamos a few years ago about his experiences developing and deploying the first nuclear bombs. I found it fascinating. My QOTD tomorrow will come from that presentation. And despite the detailed info in the presentation about the explosives and detonators used and the requests for “upgrading” beyond chemical explosives at Boomershoot I have no plans to pursue that particular line of experiments at this time.


Thank you Barbara and Professor Johnston.


MildredLawrenceJohnston
Mildred and Lawrence Johnston

Quote of the day—Pete Cunningham

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It’s a big win for Microsoft today. Windows Phone 7 is no one’s priority. But now Microsoft has a leading vendor committed to use the platform.

Pete Cunningham
An analyst with Canalys, a research firm in Reading, England.
February 11, 2011
Together, Nokia and Microsoft Renew a Push in Smartphones
[It’s a big bet. But when we had an all-hands meeting about it on Friday morning everyone seemed pretty pleased about it. There will be lots of work in involved but the rewards should be large too.—Joe]

Epic WP7 feature win

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Since I’m on “The Location Team” for Windows Phone 7 I sometimes get feedback on location usage and applications that use location information. The story below came in today and it brought tears to my eyes. I asked Afshan if I could post her story and she graciously allowed me to do so:

From: Afshan A
Sent: Monday, February 07, 2011 2:49 PM
To: Windows Phone ALL – Users & Enthusiasts
Subject: Epic WP7 feature win

WP7 Team,

Here is a story of my WP7.  It all started 45 miles away from Bellevue in Snoqualmie Pass where I enjoyed the best day of skiing with a bunch of friends in fresh powder. We left the resort in high spirits, talking about the highlights of the day when I decided to reach for my phone. I searched my empty jacket but no luck. I thought, not a problem at all, it is probably in the bag pack but still no luck. Umm, over here? Empty. We were almost half way back to Bellevue. I called my friend who was in a separate car. We were on the slopes together and she borrowed the phone from me; probably she forgot to give it back, but still no luck.

Slowly the realization grew into an empty black hole devouring all happiness – I just lost my new phone. (Ok not that long, but along those lines!). The worst part was I didn’t have a clue where I dropped it. The question was is it alive or dead?  I started cursing myself that things could have been different if I would have not been so over confident about being a responsible person and purchased the phone insurance. But well some things in life happen for a reason. We seem to gain wisdom readily through all failures than through our successes.

While I was blaming myself in the car, one of my friends suggested that I should try using ‘Find My Phone’ feature to detect the phone location. At last! a sign of hope. The other iPhone user friend in the car goes ‘You can’t use that feature unless you have subscription. At least that’s how it works for iPhones’. After hearing this conversation back and forth I didn’t lose hope. After all I’ve had the phone for a short time and I wasn’t ready to give up. This was simply not acceptable.

As soon as I reached the friend’s house who was driving, I immediately logged in to my live account and desperately looked up the option for ‘Find my Phone’.  Within a few seconds I found this life saving feature and clicked on the button to detect my Samsung Focus location co-ordinates on Bing maps. Keeping my fingers crossed for the longest 30 seconds of my life, hoping I don’t require subscription and boom, I see the results. The phone was resting at Snoqualmie Pass 250 yards from interstate 909 road. This was such a  relief. Even if I don’t recover the phone, at least I know what happened  to it.

When my friend saw my crying and helpless face, he offered a ride back to the resort. He was also an owner of WP7. Almost after 1 hour of driving, we got there. Now all we had to track the lost phone was through a memorized picture of Bing maps in our brains… around 9pm on a Sunday night in a closed ski resort, leaving us in the frigid cold and pitch dark slopes. You could see the clouds surrounding the moonlight and even random flurries. We had no option but to search by stumbling around the ice and snow within the area of what Bing map was showing with the help of our flash light. Immediately an idea popped up that why don’t we just detect the friend’s WP7 location co-ordinates and then compare the two pictures of the map and track it from there. My friend called another friend who had access to a PC and asked her to log in to his windows live account to detect his phone’s location co-ordinates. You can think of this friend at home as a control tower. Once the CT had the two pictures in front of her she was able to guide how far we were from the lost phone. How much further we need to move and most importantly in which direction. 50 yards north. 24 feet east. 20 more steps uphill. Every time pausing and hearing nothing but the dark silence. Finally we reached a point where the two pictures looked identical with a minimal difference to CT and we just started to ring the lost phone. Carefully listening to the sound of darkness, looking at 360 degrees and then , wait, is that… THERE, LIGHT!!! I rushed towards it, and yes it was, MY PHONE!!! IT WORKED!!!

As I rescued my dear phone from the bitter ice, it greeted me in character –the pink home screen boxes nonchalantly indicating I missed only 19 calls and 123 messages, I realized there were multiple factors that made this possible such as having a bunch of geeky friends full of ideas (who work for Microsoft), the lost phone not running out of battery or not getting crushed by other skiers on the slope and mother nature didn’t let it rain during the full 3 hours phone was resting on the snow ground. And that it landed right side up!

I think this is a proud and successful story of Windows Phone 7 which has helped me rediscover my vision of technology and how it can make a difference in your day to day life.  So Thank You WP7 !!

EpicWP7FeatureWin

Afshan A.
Microsoft OEM Finance | Business Excellence

Cut-and-paste coming to Windows Phone 7

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Via eWeek:

Microsoft is also planning a smartphone software update that will address a separate issue related to Exchange ActiveSync e-mail synchronization. Other updates, reportedly scheduled to arrive in coming weeks, will tweak application-loading speed and introduce a cut-and-paste feature.

I know a lot more and could tell you about cut-and-past and lots of other features but that would be infringing on territory of the marketing guys.

Update: A reader sent me an email saying, “I’m pretty sure it’s just copy and paste. AFAIK ‘cut’ isn’t there.”

I think I would argue that we are both right. But that discussion will have to wait until the update actually hits the streets.

It used to work but not anymore

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Some people don’t realize this is the age of information. The cost in time and money to look something up is probably less than one millionth of what it was 30 years ago.

The fossils spewing their lies at Coalition to Stop Gun Violence apparently don’t really get it. Michael Beard is the President and claims to have been an anti-rights advocate as far back as the 1960s. What worked then doesn’t work now.

The thing that surprised me is they even provided a link to the newspaper article which disputed their claim rather than supporting it.

Their claim is that a criminal who killed one police officer and wounded another in Seattle in October of 2009 was a “high-profile gun rights advocate”:

Having benefitted from the anonymity of private gun sales, Monfort has also emerged as high-profile gun rights advocate.

If you read the article the only support for this is the article title of “Christopher Monfort, Second Amendment advocate?”

My understanding is that the article titles are frequently not written by the reporter and are intended to get attention with accurate depiction of the article contents being a distant second in priority. This was certainly the case this time. There was no support in the article for the claim the criminal was a gun rights advocate let alone that he had a high profile for anything other than being a cop-killer. But that didn’t stop the folks at the CSGV from making the claim.

It’s time to hang it up guys. It doesn’t work anymore. You may have a full time salary but some guy chilling in his underground bunker with his guns and ammo and a few minutes on his hands can discover and point our your deception before the end of the same day as you posted it.

Random thought of the day

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Our skin doesn’t sense temperature directly. It only senses the difference between the temperature of the skin and the object being touched. I wonder if this means the sensors are actually measure heat/energy flow.

Technologically heat flow sensors are more difficult to build than temperature sensors. I wonder why evolution ended up with heat flow sensors rather than temperature. Was there an evolutionary advantage to this or is it more biologically difficult?

Quote of the day—Special Agent Urey W. Patrick

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Kinetic energy does not wound. Temporary cavity does not wound. The much discussed “shock” of bullet impact is a fable and “knock down” power is a myth. The critical element is penetration. The bullet must pass through the large, blood bearing organs and be of sufficient diameter to promote rapid bleeding. Penetration less than 12 inches is too little, and, in the words of two of the participants in the 1987 Wound Ballistics Workshop, “too little penetration will get you killed.”

Given desirable and reliable penetration, the only way to increase bullet effectiveness is to increase the severity of the wound by increasing the size of hole made by the bullet. Any bullet which will not penetrate through vital organs from less than optimal angles is not acceptable. Of those that will penetrate, the edge is always with the bigger bullet.

Special Agent Urey W. Patrick
July 14, 1989
U.S. Department of Justice
Handgun Wounding Factors and Effectiveness
Firearms Training Unit
FBI Academy
Quantico, Virginia
[I really need to write my post on “Energy is irrelevant” someday soon. The most recent incentive was this. Like Sebastian, I’m not convinced. The ammo doesn’t make any claims in regards to energy but I can’t imagine any of the claimed benefits outweigh the penetration and accuracy issues that are not talked about.—Joe]

It Took About 70 Years…

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…or so (I wasn’t counting but for the last few) but the correct optic mount for the U.S. Rifle, Caliber 30, M1, also known as the Garand Rifle, is now available for sale.  We’re waiting to ship until next week, when I’m supposed to have the illustrated  instructions ready, but the product is all ready to go.  In addition to making bullets, I’ll be burning the oil all weekend editing images – we try to make the illustrations serve as a more or less stand-alone picture storybook, for them that gets their information better if it’s visual.



Pretty, methinks, though I may be slightly prejudiced.


Use any IER (Scout) scope, reflex or holographic sight.  Pistol scopes may be used also, but need more eye relief and you’ll be mounting them as far forward as they’ll go.  The scout scopes are a perfect match, as is the Aimpoint Micro, Comp, et al, which also allow co witnessing.


If the rifle is good with its iron sights, it’s just as good, only faster and in a far wider range of lighting conditions, with a good optic, even a good 1x optic.


There has been a general assumption that a dot sight is a close quarters sight.  That is true, in the same sense that iron sights are for close quarters, except of course that the dot sight is a vastly superior system.  The dot sight still has its advantages on the longer shots, out to your iron sight maximum range.  More in-depth info on electronic sights here.



That’s the T1 on the new UltiMAK M12.  Now you can punch more holes, in more things, faster, under more lighting conditions, with more confidence.


The weight of the mount body, clamps and screws is 6.16 ounces.  The walnut handguard with retainer clip, that the mount replaces, weighs about 2.24 ounces, so the net installed weight is 3.92 ounces.  Your figure may vary depending on your handguard.  The mount clamps to a tapered barrel, so just like our M8 mount for the M-14, it needs a recoil lug to prevent the mount “falling off the taper”.  The M1 has that rear barrel band right there, pinned to the barrel, hence the M12’s front clamp has been extended a few thousandths beyond the front of the mount body, to engage the barrel band.  It uses two discreet clamping positions, like all our mounts, so there is never an issue with minor variations in barrel profiles.  In this case, as with our M6 for the 30 Carbine, it is cantilevered for some distance behind the rear clamp.


Mention this post in checkout at UltiMAK and you’ll get a 10% early adopters, The-View-From-North-Central-Idaho discount.  Good through Jan, 2011 – see update below.  Then send the difference to the Second Amendment Foundation.


You saw it here first (unless you were on the UltiMAK site within the last 24 hours).  This is the numero uno press release, right nghyaw!


{shameless self promotion = “off”}


Update, Jan 11, 2011; I posted this before we’d had a chance at a meeting to determine price.  We’re changing the price to $185.00.  No on-line orders have been charged as yet, so all orders will be automatically charged at the lower price, and those who mentioned, or mention, this post will receive the discount from the lower price.  Discount offer good through January, 2011.  Any walk-ins that occured before this notice, let us know and we’ll refund the balance.  Thanks, everyone, for the big response!

Barb and Windows Phone 7+

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Earlier, when she found out daughters Kim and Xenia were getting a Windows Phone 7 for Christmas, she told me, “You better have not gotten me one of those. I’ll be afraid to use it because I might lose it.”

Here is the video when she opens it and then finds out I got her a little something extra to go with it:

Not that there is anything wrong with that

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Via Greg Hamilton’s Facebook Wall Photos:

MacUsers

And a quick reminder than my attempts at humor do not in any way represent those of my employer (Microsoft).

33 megajoule rail gun—Mach 7

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I got light headed watching the camera scan the banks of capacitors.

I wouldn’t want to be within a mile in any direction of this gun when it was fired. That many volts ready to dump that many amps in so few microseconds is scary stuff even without a Mach 7 projectile with a range of 100 miles.

Order to buy

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Microsoft’s Kinect is doing quite well and may soon be a sex toy as well. People that don’t quite “get it” when it is described to them end up spending hours playing with it when they try it. People at work are complaining of sore muscles and some are even seeing the doctor for before coming back to work after a long weekend of dancing and jumping around in front of their televisions .

Windows Phone 7, particularly when running on a Samsung Focus, is getting a lot of praise and sales are going well for it too.

We have a little bit of money left over from some recent financial shuffling and I put in an order to buy a little more Microsoft stock.

*I’m a Microsoft employee but any “insider” information I have isn’t worth what ten minutes of searching the web would gain you.

Google and privacy

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Via email from Chet:

In the past I have said I don’t mind private business getting overbearing as much as I do the government doing so. But when an industry leader uses the invasion of your privacy to it’s advantage without repercussions the rest of the industry is almost forced to follow along or get left in the financial dust. And once the technology is deployed and a profit can be made selling it to the government someone will do that too. It won’t matter how evil it is (read IBM and the Holocaust), if the price is right, and with a government involved the price could be you (or your company) continuing to survive, the information will be abused.

There needs to be repercussion for companies who do this. The “noise” and the boycotts need to start before the information is abused.

I know a lot more than I am at liberty to say and it hurts to bite my tongue this hard…

Note: Full disclosure—I work for Microsoft who is a competitor of Google.

Windows Phone 7 sales are good

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Microsoft is being closed mouthed about the sales numbers for Windows Phone 7 but the indications are that it is doing well:



Early reports hint that Windows Phone 7 has been selling strongly in international markets, with DigiTimes reporting in a Nov. 3 article that sales of HTC-build Windows Phone 7 smartphones are better than expected in Europe and Australia. In the U.K., news outlets reported a lack of available phones through carrier Orange.


“Early supporters of the new operating system such as South Korea’s Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics are also experiencing rising demand from carriers,” suggested the DigiTimes article, which sourced its information as unnamed “Taiwan-based handset makers.”


TheStreet.com, citing an unnamed “market research source,” reported some 40,000 Windows Phone 7 devices sold in the United States on the first day of release. Neither Microsoft nor AT&T offered exact figures when contacted by eWEEK, although an AT&T spokesperson said the carrier was “encouraged by early demand from customers in stores and online.”


Microsoft employees (such as myself) were asked to not purchase new WP7 phones for a few days so the local stores would have phones in stock for the general public.


I haven’t decided which one I will get yet and I don’t really have a strong recommendation at this time. I have three “engineering units” in hand which I have been using for quite some time and will get my personal phone within the next few weeks.

That idea has potential

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Hover your mouse over the image to get the best part of the joke.

And according to my sources it isn’t all that difficult to build a program which can read a few conversation threads on a topic then make short comments that are indistinguishable from a live person on a similar thread. I would write something to do that and haunt the comment sections of the anti-gun websites but they disable comments or we outnumber them about 100 to 1 already. Hence human labor ends up being “cheaper” than automating the task.

It would be even easier to automate the task of responding as an anti-gun person to all the pro-gun websites—so I did:

namespace AntiGunComment
{
    using System;

    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            string[] commentCollection =
            {
                “ban armor piercing ammo”,
                “ban assault weapons”,
                “ban cop killer bullets”,
                “ban plastic guns”,
                “ban Saturday Night Specials”,
                “ban sniper rifles”,
                “ban the shoulder thing that goes up”,
                “close the gun show loophole”,
                “get illegal guns off the streets”,
                “keep guns out of the hands of children”,
                “license gun owners”,
                “reduce gun availability”,
                “register all guns”,
                “require an arsenal license”,
            };
            const string commentFormat = “We need to {0}. It’s just COMMON SENSE!”;
            Random randomNumberGenerator = new Random();
            int index = randomNumberGenerator.Next(commentCollection.Length);

            Console.Write(string.Format(commentFormat, commentCollection[index]));
        }
    }
}

In case the source code is a little too obscure here is an executable for up to date Windows machines.

It’s a little scary to think someone could be replaced with such a small number of lines of code. With a little more work the capabilities could be enhanced such that it could respond to Bing News alerts by making a blog post. This could replace most of the anti-gun bloggers out there (hmm… maybe I could do that next weekend). I wonder what Joan Peterson and MikeB302000 would think of that… but then, maybe they already have been replaced. That would explain some things.

First Windows Phone 7 sold

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It’s a happy day for the Windows Phone 7 team.


FirstWindowsPhone7Sold


I should go celebrate or something but my chemistry set is frowned upon in Redmond.


I’ll probably get some iPhones and Androids to dispose of in Idaho after the carriers start selling in the U.S.

Windows Phone 7 ads

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Microsoft has released two of the ads for Windows Phone 7. I saw preliminary versions of them (and others) about a month ago. Most are pretty good. One has a little bit of what is known in our family as “Scott family humor” (my wife’s side of the family). I don’t like it but I included it anyway.

You will be seeing a lot of these ads soon. Microsoft is making a really big deal out of this phone and I think it is justified. I’m more proud of this work than anything I have done professionally for 15 years.

When I have shown the phone the speech function (particularly in conjunction with search on maps) has most impressed people (it’s working much better than when I was demoing it at the NRA convention):

See more Windows Phone 7 videos here.

Full disclosure: I work for Microsoft on Windows Phone 7.

Quote of the day—Wikipedia, Shaped charge

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Most of the jet formed moves at hypersonic speed. The tip moves at 7 to 14 km/s, the jet tail at a lower velocity (1 to 3 km/s), and the slug at a still lower velocity (less than 1 km/s). The exact velocities are dependent on the charge’s configuration and confinement, explosive type, materials used, and the explosive-initiation mode. At typical velocities, the penetration process generates such enormous pressures that it may be considered hydrodynamic; to a good approximation, the jet and armor may be treated as incompressible fluids, with their material strengths ignored.

Wikipedia, Shaped charge
Emphasis added.
Found while Wikiwandering from a link at Roberta’s.
[“… may be treated as incompressible fluids, with their material strengths ignored”! That statement makes me light-headed and weak at the knees. The “7 to 14 km/s” doesn’t hurt either.

7 km/s is about 23,000 feet per second. Your .220 Swift is considered a very zippy cartridge but it only gives you about 4,100 feet per second at the muzzle. Hence a shaped charge gives you velocities 5 to 10 times that of a .220 Swift at the muzzle. This is considered high-hypersonic to re-entry speeds.

I have books on computer simulation of shaped charges. I really need to write the software then do some field testing. Supposedly it is pretty easy to punch through three feet of reinforced concrete. I have some large rocks out in the middle of some fields I’d like to experiment with.—Joe]

Windows Phone 7

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According to USA Today Windows Phone 7 is launching on October 11:

It’s about to be put up or shut up time for Microsoft in mobile. On October 11, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and AT&T Mobility & Consumer Markets CEO Ralph de la Vega will be conducting a New York City press conference to spill the beans on the widely anticipated Windows Phone 7 smartphones.

I’m looking forward to being able to buy my own Windows Phone 7. The engineering development hardware I’ve been carrying around for the last year always seems to have something wrong with it that “will be fixed before it’s released”. Some had great sound and camera but poor Wi-Fi reception. Others had great Wi-Fi but poor GPS reception. It was good enough for development but now I’m ready for the real thing.

I know some people that need a new phone for Christmas too. It’ll be awesome.

Full disclosure: I work for Microsoft on the Windows Phone 7 project.

All your Motorola Androids are belong to us

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Yesterday Microsoft announced they have filed a lawsuit against Motorola alleging infringement on nine patents regarding Android smart phones:

REDMOND, Wash. – Oct. 1, 2010 – Microsoft Corp. today filed a patent infringement action against Motorola, Inc. and issued the following statement from Horacio Gutierrez, corporate vice president and deputy general counsel of Intellectual Property and Licensing:

“Microsoft filed an action today in the International Trade Commission and in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington against Motorola, Inc. for infringement of nine Microsoft patents by Motorola’s Android-based smartphones. The patents at issue relate to a range of functionality embodied in Motorola’s Android smartphone devices that are essential to the smartphone user experience, including synchronizing email, calendars and contacts, scheduling meetings, and notifying applications of changes in signal strength and battery power.

We have a responsibility to our customers, partners, and shareholders to safeguard the billions of dollars we invest each year in bringing innovative software products and services to market. Motorola needs to stop its infringement of our patented inventions in its Android smartphones.”

More information can be found here. Even though I work for Microsoft on Windows Phone 7 I don’t have any further information on the topic and even if I did I wouldn’t be at liberty to discuss it.