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.
Category Archives: Technology
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.
Interesting use for them
Men have a source of potentially life-saving stem cells between their legs:
A team of American researchers has found a way to easily identify stem cells in the testicles of adult mice that can be coaxed to turn into brain cells, muscle cells, heart cells, blood cells and even blood vessels.
One day, they say, male patients may be able to turn to their own testicles as a source of stem cells to repair an ailing heart or kidney or to fix the brain damage caused by Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s disease.
The procedure would involve removing a small piece of testicle – about the same amount used for a biopsy.
The first question that comes to my mind is, “Can you repair the damage you did to my testicle?” They don’t answer that question in the article. I presume the answer is yes, but I’d want to make sure before I authorized a major overhaul of my other body parts. I’d hate to have the rest of my body in full working order and then find they had scrapped out my testicles in the process.
I guess that’s one way to waste £200million
From the U.K. we find (via Bruce):
A comparison of the number of cameras in each London borough with the proportion of crimes solved there found that police are no more likely to catch offenders in areas with hundreds of cameras than in those with hardly any.
In fact, four out of five of the boroughs with the most cameras have a record of solving crime that is below average.
[…]
We have estimated that CCTV cameras have cost the taxpayer in the region of £200million in the last 10 years but it’s not entirely clear if some of that money would not have been better spent on police officers.
Not entirely clear? What could be more clear? It appears that the rate of crime resolution is inversely proportional to the number of cameras present.
But they are apparently so accustom to Big Brother being there they are afraid to consider his absence. But don’t expect them to remove the cameras and spend the money on something better like more police and/or better enforcement. You should expect them to conclude they don’t have enough cameras and to increase proselytization. It’s just one of those things about human nature that is hard to accept.
Gun porn
Son James and I watch DVDs of some Science Fiction TV series together nearly every Monday evening. Until we got all caught up with the releases we were watching four episodes of Stargate SG-1 each get together.
About three weeks ago Sean and I checked out a gun store that he had never been to and I had only been to once about 18 months ago. The wall looked like this:
James has been saying he needs to buy a gun. And right there, in plain sight, was a suppressed PS-90 TR (Triple Rail, semi-auto version of the P-90 used by SG-1 as they battle evil aliens from all over the galaxy). I tried to get James to buy it with his bonus money but he was too smart for that. It’s space-a-roma (I think that was the word Sean used) appeal is very high but neither James nor I have a use for one.
Place your bets
IBM put 35 programmers on a free OpenOffice offering that will compete with Microsoft Office. I don’t know how many programmers Microsoft has working on Office but I know they take up most, if not all, of buildings 16, 17, and 18. Each of those buildings are large three-story buildings.
IBM versus Microsoft. Free versus expensive. 35 versus hundreds (include our son James).
Hmmmm…. place your bets with your broker. I put all my chips on Microsoft.
A nice pointer from the Gun Guys
For once I can actually thank the Gun Guys for doing something useful. They pointed me at this video. Nice. Thanks Gun Guys.
Of course they call it ridiculous. But hey, what do you expect from him?
I still have the sneaking suspicion this guy is working for our side and collecting money from the bad guys. Nice gig if you can get it and aren’t encumbered by little things like morals and principles.
Blog maintenance
I did some maintenance on my blog this morning. The live comment viewer is working now, or at least it was the last couple times I tried it. I can now edit posts and have the changes “stick” which they hadn’t been doing for the last couple weeks. Very annoying that last one. In order to edit a post I had to copy the .XML file for that day’s entry to my personal computer, using my “geek brain” edit the .XML post which was encoded within the day entry file, then copy the file back up to the blog server.
While I was messing around with it I thought I might as well update the blogroll to better reflect reality. There are other blogs I read fairly frequently but I only put blogs that I read every post nearly every day on my blogroll. I’m sort of a purist I guess. No offense to others that I read frequently but don’t have on the list. I just don’t have time for everyone that I would like to read and/or that link to me. If you link to me in a post I will read your post and I will monitor the comments to it for a while. And if you put me on your blogroll I will check you out for a few days but it’s going to be very rare that I am going to link to you just because you linked to me.
I know I messed up some RSS feeders as things were changing–at least mine was affected. Sorry about that.
Quote of the day–Rick Keene
There are so many ways to game this technology, that’s the difficulty. This is not ready for prime time.
Rick Keene
September 11, 2007
Assemblyman, R-Chico.
Handgun stamping bill sent to governor–Spent shell casings would be imprinted
[Yup. Advocates of this are either exceedingly simple minded and/or just want to increase the difficultly of gun ownership.–Joe]
Quote of the day–Ray Ozzie
I fear we are partying like it is 1984.
Ray Ozzie
Microsoft Chief Software Architect
September 6, 2007
Company Meeting 2007–Changing the world
[Ozzie talked about growing up in the 60’s and being in fear of “the man” and how the personal computer was believed to help restore power to the individual. He asked us to make sure private things could be kept private even when we are putting more and more information into “the cloud”. It was good stuff. I had planned to write up a big post on the meeting last night but got wrapped up in expressing my “sympathy” to Robyn.–Joe]
Quote of the day–John Gilmore
The whole conference has spent a lot of time talking about ways to control uses of information and to protect peoples’ privacy after the information was collected. But that only works if you assume a good government. If we get one seriously bad government, they’ll have all the information they need to make an efficient police state and make it the last government. It’s more than convenient for them – in fact, it’s a temptation for people who want to do that, to try to get into power and do it. Because we are giving them the means.
John Gilmore
A transcript of remarks given at the First Conference on Computers, Freedom, and Privacy, March 28,1991
[See also my Jews In The Attic Test.–Joe]
Enough columns on the spreadsheet
For years Ry and I tested new reactive target recipes for Boomershoot. When our hypothesis for making an explosive which could be easily detonated with long distance rifle fire were proven false Ry would lament that we didn’t have enough columns on our spreadsheet. There was some variable, which we didn’t know existed, that was critical to our understanding of explosive detonation. Literally it was true that I had (have) a spreadsheet with lots of different variables that we thought might be critical to make our explosives better. Some of those included:
- Flammability limits (acceptable ratios of fuel to oxygen where ignition can occur)
- Heat of vaporization
- Specific heats (including those for phase changes)
- Flash point
- Auto ignition temperature
- Heat of combustion per unit mass
- Heat of combustion per unit of oxygen
- Heat of combustion relative to specific heat of the materials
- Temperature of decomposition of the oxidizer
Our experiments yielded no obvious corelation between any of our hypothesises and the real world–until the last couple of days.
The title for the column on the spreadsheet we apparently were looking for is Ω. In explosive engineering terms (rather than electrical engineering terms which is what first comes to mind with that symbol) this is the weight ratio, expressed as a precentage, of the oxygen remaining or required (expressed as a negative number) for complete combustion of all the fuel in the explosives. For example, TNT, C7H5N3O6 has end products of CO, H2O, and N2. That carbon monoxide (CO) could have been converted into carbon dioxide (CO2) and more heat if there had been enough oxygen around. It turns out that Ω for TNT is -74%. For RDX (the active ingredient in C-4), C3H6N6O6, Ω is -21.6%. From my earliest attempts at reactive target explosives I started out with stoichiometric ratios. This would give me the most bang for a given mass of components. That is, no excess fuel and no excess oxygen left over after the reaction was complete. It was ultimately discovered via both experimental results and hints found on the Internet that maximum sensitivity was not achieved with stoichiometric ratios. It was more sensitivity when the explosive was oxygen rich. From some of my “new” books on explosives I found that “Ω” is a measure of that “richness” or “poverty”. I modified my spreadsheet to calculate Ω for various recipes.
Here is a partial (I have three times this number of recorded experiments) table of various Boomerite recipes and my best approximation of Ω:
| Recipe | Ω |
| Boomerite 1998 | 1.2% |
| Boomerite 1999 | 2.4% |
| Boomerite 2001 | 9.2% |
| Boomerite 2002 | 8.3% |
| Boomerite 2003 | 19.4% |
| Boomerite 2006 | 16.2% |
There were other variables that changed as well such as packaging materials, fuel used, ratios of oxidizers, catalysts, size of the particles, and packing density which also affected the sensitivity. But the correlation with Ω is very strong. Each year the sensitivity increased and Ω, a measure of the excess oxygen, was a significant component of that increase in sensitivity. It also can be too high–obviously if there is no fuel at all and only oxiderizer it’s going to be a minor explosion at best. But this gives me a reason to revisit old fuels and try something a little bit different this time.
Side note: The most recent recipe on the web is not what we actually use. What I publish is always at least one “generation” behind our “latest and greatest”. Ω for the web recipe is 20.1%.
Good choice of background music
The Brady Bunch has a link to this video about “microstamping” on their website. They ignore obvious and important points of their critics such as:
- Shell casings found at a gun range can be deliberately scattered at a crime scene
- Revolvers don’t leave shell casings at the crime scene unless the shooter reloads
- Replacement firing pins and breech faces would have to be registered and tracked as well as the firearm itself
- Gun parts are easily modified or manufactured
- Firing pins can be manufactured from scrap metal with simple hand tools–they may not last more than a few dozen shots but they should be more than adequate for most crimes
- Breech faces markings can be ground off and/or filled in with metal filled epoxy
- There are many millions of guns already in circulation
- Stolen guns aren’t going to be associated/registered with the criminal who used it in a crime
- A black market will likely develop in unmarked gun components or components that have phony numbers (such as fake SSN cards that have valid numbers but belong to someone else)
One must assume they believe in some sort of supernatural capabilities for this technology that defies the laws of physics and human nature as we know it. But regardless of all the reasons why this scheme could never work the big thing that I noticed while watching this video was the background music–the theme from The X-Files.
Laser Spy Microphone
Via Bruce.
I’m surprised this works as well as it does. I would have thought you would need a telescope (or cheap rifle scope) to focus the light on the photocell. I’m certain you would get better range if you did so. Also using an infrared laser would make it less likely your eavesdropping will be detected.