Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.
Archimedes
[From some reason Kevin’s project reminded me of this.–Joe]
Category Archives: Technology
Real ID is in its death throes
I’d like to believe it but I won’t until the coffin has been nailed shut, it’s been cremated, and the ashes dumped in a pig farm lagoon. Here is the story:
“In discussions I participated in with the Department of Homeland Security, they were asked point blank, ‘What will happen to states that don’t participate?'” said Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap, who was on the call. “The response was, ‘Nothing will happen. There will be no penalty. You can still get on a plane.'”
[…]
States began defying the feds, passing laws saying that they had no intention of complying with the REAL ID requirements. The federal government retorted that this was fine, but citizens from those states could not use drivers’ licenses to enter federal buildings or board aircraft (which are screened by federal personnel).
In the face of this sort of opposition, DHS extended the deadline for compliance to 2009, and then again to 2013. Now, it could be extended again, and states could get even more time to issue cards for older drivers (apparently less of a security threat).
Whether the new rules are an expedient compromise or a total backpedalling from the goals of REAL ID depends on who you ask. The ACLU, for instance, holds strong views on the matter.
“DHS is essentially whittling Real ID down to nothing—all in the name of denying Real ID is a failure,” said ACLU senior legislative counsel Tim Sparapani. “Real ID is in its death throes, and any signs of life are just last gasps.”
Like that is going to help
It’s a pleasant fantasy but the people offering these sort of solutions either don’t understand the problem or don’t want to face reality. From one of our wonderful government laboratories:
Los Alamos Lab developing liquid scanner for airport security
Scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory are developing a new type of scanner that can distinguish liquids blaring out a warning for bad ones, like explosives, while letting through good ones, like water.
…
They will be able to scan bottles as big as a “magnum-sized champaign bottle,” Espy said.
“Apparently the whole duty-free thing is suffering, and people can’t carry their liquor on airplanes anymore,” Espy said. “It’s been disruptive to commerce. So, that’s one of the benefits of this.”
Software upgrades could add new liquids to the device’s detection list if any new threats arise, she said.
“The nice thing about this system is it’s not tuned to any specific threats,” Espy said. “As new materials of concern arise, it can be adapted to detect those.”
Even after the scanner is in place we still won’t be able to take liquor on airplanes–unless they are going to allow ethanol on board. In which case I need to demonstrate how to make an “explosive” out of ethanol. It would be tough to get a true detonation but in the enclosed space of an airplane cabin it just won’t matter whether the speed of propagation is greater than or less than the speed of sound.
And if they stop letting people take liquid hydrocarbons on board I’ll demonstrate the same sort of thing is possible with bread flour, powdered sugar, or coffee creamer. And when they ban those let them build a scanner that is sensitive to powdered human hair.
And those ideas are all taking the direct “brute force” approach. There are lots of other, much more subtle, ways to defeat airport “security”. TSA is backward for A Security Theater. It’s time we considered the alternatives.
Ho hum
Depending on what your definition of a robot is sex with robots is old hat. But what this guy has in mind is a taking it little bit further:
According to Netherlands University student David Levy, robots may become so human-like in the near future that people could fall in love with them, marry them, and have sex with them.
He recently completed his PhD on the subject of human-robot relationships. He stated that “At first, sex with robots might be considered geeky, but once you have a story like “I had sex with a robot and it was great!” appear in a magazine like Cosmo, I’d expect many people to jump on the bandwagon.”
Existing toys include these (not safe for work):
- http://sybian.com/ (considered by many to be the ultimate toy for women)
- http://vrinnovations.com/ (computer driven toy for men)
- http://www.adameve.com/adult-sex-toys-ch-6.aspx (variety of older technology)
Microstamping patent
There has been a lot of talk (and here) about how the anti-gun bigots got pwned by a section in the microstamping bill that says it won’t take effect unless the technology is “available to more than one manufacturer unencumbered by any patent restrictions”. Furthermore those people dancing in the streets point out the primary patents won’t expire for another 15 years.
I hate to rain on everyone’s happy dance but check this out:
Question: Is microstamping a sole-source technology that would create a government-sanctioned monopoly for a single company?
Answer: The patent holder of microstamping technology has announced that a royalty-free license will be provided to every manufacturer in the United States on guns sold in California.
Tell me again who got pwned.
I still don’t want to feed one
This might help the “bullets on target” problem I have with machine guns but I still am put off by the cost of feeding such a device. At 1000 yards with my “Spud Gun” (some call it “insanely accurate”) will deliver a bullet just as accurately and with as much momentum as I could with this sub gun at 25 yards and with far less chance of receiving return fire.
It is a neat engineering advance in guns though. I applaud them for their ingenuity.
All my bags are packed
I’m ready to go. Barb and I are leaving on a jet plane for Reno and the Gun Blogger Rendezvous this evening. That’s assuming the TSA will allow me, my guns, and ammo on the plane. Alaska Airlines will only allow me to take 50 pounds of ammo [heavy sigh]. That would have been enough for what I want to do except that with all the other stuff I’m taking (Boomershoot give aways, knives, spotting scope, tripod, range bag, magazines, holsters, guns, shot timer, eye and ear protection, laser range finder, binoculars, spare batteries, gun cleaning gear, walkie-talkie, altimeter, wind gauge, thermometer, exterior ballistics calculator, targets, and a clean pair of socks) I started running up against a different weight limit without bringing all the ammo I wanted.
I have enough match rifle ammo and if I decide I want some more pistol ammo I’ll buy it in Reno sometime tomorrow.
Update: We made it through security without incident. We are now sitting at our gate waiting to board. Pretty amazing considering all the electronics and cables I had in my computer bag. The holster in the computer bag apparently didn’t raise an eyebrow either. And the empty water bottle… I thought for sure they would want to open my backpack to make sure it was actually empty. They were cool with me wearing a shirt with the picture of a gun on it and the Boomershoot coat too. All nice to know. Maybe they are happy with just infringing on one constitutionally guaranteed right at a time.
So far the flight is on time. You can track it in near real time here.
Insufficient mylenation
I’ll bet that was a real rush. But when someone prone on a few roller skate wheels passes a motorcycle you know it’s got to be a case of insufficient mylenation (another example can be found in the third paragraph here). Notice how he bleeds off speed by swerving side-to-side when coming up behind the motorcycle? I’ll bet he doesn’t have real brakes. It’s still awesome:
Update: A friend of mine owns a roller skating rink. I asked him if he had ever done anything like this. He replied:
Joe, Back in the “GOOD’OL” days when all my knees worked I skated down 3 of the then MAJOR hills in Lewiston which were Fifth St. Grade, Eighth St. Grade and Twenty-first St. Grade, in Clarkston the biggie was Beachview Park Grade, the trouble with it was it ended in a parking lot with curbs a strip of grass, and the Snake River. It’s a bitch to swim with roller skates on……………! I passed a car on the Eighth ST. Grade deal he was doing 25 or 30 and he said I was still accelerating, but I sure the first thing he did was let off so it seemed faster then he thought. We did clock the Twenty-first St deal and top was about 42 MPH-…….,use REALLY good Bearings
IIRC the way his knees stopped working was when he and his motorcycle parted company while they were both traveling at about 50 MPH. He tried running to avoid getting a road rash. His knees got messed up in addition to receiving numerous other injuries you might expect from a separation of man and machine of this type.
The god helmet
Put this helmet on and get a connection to your god(s).
Changes in CPR protocol
It turns out that for an out-of-hospital “witnessed cardiac arrest” you probably shouldn’t do the mouth-to-mouth portion of CPR.
You better get used to it
Uncle says see-through frogs are creepy. I say you better get used to it. People are now creating completely new species. Future Shock is here and now.
I read Future Shock in about ’75 and my opinion hasn’t changed with 30+ years of evidence–Toffler just likes to blather about things no one can or has any need to measure.
Do you think we can gain any traction with the environmentalists who whine about the loss of species if we started creating new species faster than we made old ones extinct? No? I didn’t think so either. There’s just no making some people happy.
More Halo 3 propaganda
Ry has four Halo 3 video ads posted. Microsoft puts an amazing amount of money into marketing (and nearly everything they do).
Playing in the park before going to the sandbox
Xenia made a video of John and her in the park. John is now headed back to the sandbox to guard convoys with his video game.
Good luck and thanks John. Please come back in one piece.
Alternative to Google for search
In case you haven’t tested it out recently (as in the last day) Microsoft’s search engine was just updated and for the first time has search results on par with Google. I know the test methodology for this claim but I’m not sure I’m at liberty to reveal it but I am of the opinion they did a good job measuring this and that the claim is accurate. “On par” is not good enough to win and I expect MS will pull ahead of Google in the near future.
Having an alternative to the anti-gun owner bigots at Google is important and now you don’t have to compromise on search results. Now if I can just get the message to the right person to get MS to give us an alternative to AdSense so I can drop the Google ads in the right margin of this blog.
Quote of the day–Dr. Jack Wheeler
Syria is shamed and silent. Iran is freaking out in panic. Defenseless enemies are fun.
Dr. Jack Wheeler
Silence in Syria, Panic in Iran
September 25, 2007
[Via David.–Joe]
Quote of the day–Bruce Schneier
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]
Halo 3 propaganda
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
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?
They just don’t get it
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.
Machine gun interest
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:
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.