Radio Frequency ID–the chips they put in pets for identifcation (and some people want to put them in people) are everywhere. They used for inventory control, shoplifting detection, and ID cards. Here is how to make your own wallet that will block the remote reading of the devices in your pocket.
Category Archives: Technology
Bomb-sniffing wasps
Via Bruce Schneier comes this article in USA Today:
Scientists at a Georgia laboratory have developed what could be a
low-tech, low-cost weapon in the war on terrorism: trained wasps.The tiny, non-stinging wasps can check for hidden explosives at airports and monitor for toxins in subway tunnels.
“You can rear them by the thousands, and you can
train them within a matter of minutes,” says Joe Lewis, a U.S.
Agriculture Department entomologist. “This is just the very tip of the
iceberg of a very new resource.”…
The wasps are trained with sugar water by using
the classical conditioning techniques made famous by Pavlov’s dogs.
Rains says the wasps are sensitive to a host of chemical odors,
including 2,4-DNT, a volatile compound used in dynamite.To do their work, five wasps — each a half-inch
long — are placed in a plastic cylinder that is 15 inches tall. This
“Wasp Hound,” which costs roughly $100 per unit, has a vent in one end
and a camera that connects to a laptop computer.When the wasps pick up an odor they’ve been
trained to detect they gather by the vent — a response that can be
measured by the computer or actually seen by observers.Lewis says the wasps, when exposed to some
chemicals, “can detect as low as four parts per billion, which is an
incredibly small amount.”
I admire the innovation in the research laboratory but I am
skeptical of success in the real world. The wasps apparently have to be
trained for each specific volatile chemical. The 2,4-DNT mentioned in
the article as being present in dynamite doesn’t exist in other
explosives such as ammonium-nitrate/fuel-oil mixtures. Ammonium nitrate
by itself doesn’t really have any volatile byproducts other than, in
some cases, ammonia which would result in the obvious problem with
false positives. Fuel oil sensing would also have similar problems with
false positives as well as being easily replaced with almost any
hydrocarbon including such things as diesel, alcohol, and powdered sugar.
The ATF as well as foreign regulatory agencies require plastic
explosives to be manufactured with a small percentage of volatile
chemicals such as Ethylene glycol dinitrate,
2,3-Dimethyl-2,3-dinitrobutane, para-mononitrotoluene, or
ortho-mononitrotoluene. This is to make it feasible to easily detect
the presence of the explosives.
It would be overly optimistic to assume terrorists would conform to
these requirement in the manufacture of their own explosives.
Quote of the day–Ry Jones
He’s clearly nuts.
Ry Jones
December 27, 2005
[Referring to this guy thinking government regulation could prevent abuse of a mandatory Universal Biometric ID and such a system was inevitable. See also some of the on-line clashes I have had with him. He is also my number one suspect as to the person that gave PNNL the ‘tip’ to look at my blog and websites and if true is probably a conspirator in this felony. See about half way down on this page for more details.–Joe]
Beagle wreckage and rifle shooting on the moon
It was given up for lost almost two years ago but it was a mystery what happened to it. Now they believe they have found the wreckage:
SCIENTISTS believe they have finally found the wreckage of the stricken Beagle 2 Mars probe, almost two years after it crashed on landing.
A sophisticated analysis of grainy images from a Nasa spacecraft has convinced the Beagle 2 team that the lander met its end in a small crater, into which it touched down in the early hours of Christmas Day 2003 with little chance of survival.
The pictures from Mars Global Surveyor, which have been pored over by an expert who once interpreted spy satellite images for the RAF, show an impact point in the crater and several objects that appear to be Beagle 2’s protective gas bags and, perhaps, the lander itself.
They suggest that the probe was lost because of cruel luck as it touched down in one of the worst possible places for a soft and successful landing. Rather than dropping to the surface on a flat plain, it appears to have first struck the downslope of a small crater about 18.5m (60ft) in diameter, before crashing into its opposite wall, bouncing several times around the rim and eventually coming to rest at the bottom. Even if the gas bags that were meant to cushion its impact were fully inflated, and there is some evidence that they were not, their design would not have allowed them to protect the probe properly under these unlikely circumstances.
Bummer.
I’m a big proponent of space exploration. Long term getting off this planet is one of the necessary conditions for the survival of our species. And in the medium term it represents one of the higher likelihood events to restore our freedoms. Mars represents a good target for colonization and every time we go there it helps us to understand the problems of the journey and the habitation a little bit better.
Another motivation for getting into space is I would like to be the first person to shoot 1000 yard groups on the moon. With no wind and 1/5 gravity the group sizes will be awesome! And you wondered why I had shooting conditions for the moon built into Modern Ballistics. And no, despite a certain science fiction story you can’t put bullets into orbit from the surface of the moon. Shooting tangential to the surface I estimate you need to be about 550 970 miles above the surface to achieve a circular orbit with a .220 Swift.
I sent in my application to NASA to be an astronaut 15 days before Challenger blew up which stymied that career path but I figure if my friend gets his immortality project working I still have a chance. In addition to immortality he wants to carve his initials in the moon big enough to be seen from earth with the naked eye. Since explosives are one of the best ways of carving rock he asked if I would do it for him. If he figures out how to get us safely to the moon and back I’ll figure out a way to carve the 70 mile wide LINES of his initials. With all the other gear going up I figure there would be room for my rifle and a thousand rounds of ammo (especially if he uses the Orion concept).
Update: I rethought my back of the envelope (literally) calculations this morning and realize I had made an error. I did some more number crunching and came up with some different numbers. And since orbital mechanics is not my specialty I’m not guaranteeing any of these numbers. Useful web pages to figure it out for yourself are here and here. I’m assuming a muzzle velocity of 4000 fps out of the .220 Swift which has one of the highest muzzle velocities in a commerical load.
Blog advertising
In case you hadn’t noticed the identical ads on so many different blogs, including the second one from the top here on the right. Here is the story:
The MSNBC cable network plans to flood the Internet this week with its largest concentrated online pitch, running advertising on hundreds of Web sites and blogs. The cost of the campaign, to promote three prime-time programs, is estimated at just under $1 million.
There’s more to the story but basically they are trying to see if they can drive traffic from the internet to their cable channel. They are advertising on 800 different blogs. I wish I was getting 1/800 of $1,000,000 but I’m not. I’m far, far cheaper than that. So far they have had 24 clicks from 313 page views. That, 7.67%, is a rather outstanding click through rate. My boomershoot ad only gets 1.73% and the t-shirt ad currently on top gets 2.94%.
Best bullet for hunting
This guy is even more obsesive and geeky than I am. He shot about 2350 rounds to get this data.
Sex profits
Innovation as well as expanding their market share of existing products brought greater profits to Durex recently:
The launch of sex toys and new types of condoms has lifted sales growth at Durex to a record 10 per cent. And SSL, which owns the Durex brand, promised further growth yesterday as it launched a new range of sex aids for men that will be available in Tesco and Boots.
A range of vibrators and lubricants sold under the Durex Play brand accounted for half of the sales growth reported yesterday. Durex revenues were £77.1m in the six months to 30 September.
The decision by Boots to stock a new £5.99 vibrating ring for men represents a significant U-turn for the high street chain. At the start of this year it backed out of talks to launch the Durex Play range of vibrators, for fear of a conservative backlash. The range was eventually launched by Superdrug.
…
Tesco insisted yesterday the disposable rings – which last 20 minutes and have a small vibrating pad to enhance the pleasure of women during sex – were not sex toys but part of the health and family planning range.
SSL claimed that Durex’s global market share had risen to 30 per cent after strong growth in the US and Eastern Europe, and thanks to the launch of innovative condoms, such as Pleasuremax, which is ribbed, and Tingle, which is coated with a lubricant that gives a tingling sensation.
SSL, which owns the Scholl footwear and footcare brands, reported interim profits of £17.3m, up from £10.5m in the half-year to 30 September 2004.
ID cards in UK take some heat
Bruce Schneier brought this to my attention.
Ex-MI5 chief says ID cards in the UK would be “useless” for fighting terrorism and “a waste of money”. Which is what I have been saying for years. She, of course, has a much more influential position than most. And she does a good job of hammering the half-baked idea for fighting terrorists:
ID cards have possibly some purpose.
But I don’t think that anybody in the intelligence services, particularly in my former service, would be pressing for ID cards.
My angle on ID cards is that they may be of some use but only if they can be made unforgeable – and all our other documentation is quite easy to forge.
If we have ID cards at vast expense and people can go into a back room and forge them they are going to be absolutely useless.
ID cards may be helpful in all kinds of things but I don’t think they are necessarily going to make us any safer.
And if it doesn’t help when fighting terrorists then it’s not going to be any good for fighting criminals.
Solving the worlds problems
I was talking with a new friend the other night–“Solving the worlds problems”. And his solution was two fold; 1) Sterilize everyone at birth, 2) Put a chip, with a GPS and radio transmitter, in everyone’s skull at birth.
His thinking on item 1) was that after people really wanted kids then they would be able to get the sterilization reversed (we are talking utopia here, not the reality that many sterilizations can’t be reversed). With only wanted kids the quality of the childhood environment would go up drastically and crime, child abuse, gangs, drug use, etc. would drastically reduce and our looming exhaustion of natural resources would be relieved. On item 2) it was his belief that this would almost completely solve all crime where the criminal planned/hoped to escape. His biggest concern was how to deal with all the police, prosecutors, judges, lawyers, and prison personal that would be put out of work by his grand plan.
I think I bruised my jaw from it hitting the floor so hard. Apart from all the unsurmountable technical problems, with both 1) and 2), his ideas fail my Jews in the Attic Test in the most spectacle fashion I have ever seen. I outlined the test and said his ideas would usher in a police state and result in the deaths of millions. His response was that he would get rid of religion too so there wouldn’t be any need to hide “Jews in the Attic”.
Yup. There really are people like that out there. I tell you…just don’t get weirded out when someone starts talking and they will tell you the most “interesting” things.
He’s a nice guy and I like him. He’s very entertaining–but I don’t want him voting.
Tagged by the music meme
Almost two months ago Ben tagged me with this post and said:
5) I’m passing this meme on to:
Kirk at Limpidity, as he hasn’t posted or emailed in awhile;
AnalogKid at RandomNuclearStrikes, as he is one of my favorites nowadays;
and Joe Huffman. I just can’t see him having a big Styx collection that he rocks out to on Saturday nights.
No Styx at all. But at this minute on this Saturday night I’m listening to Ten Years After, A Space in Time. A few minutes ago it was Uncle Bonsai, The Inessential Uncle Bonsai.
I didn’t really mean to wait this long before responding. I had to think about it some. Since we had our first kid, 21 years and nearly five months ago we pretty much stopped listening to music. When the kid(s) were awake music would have just added to the din. When they were quiet (asleep) we were so grateful for the quiet we just enjoyed the silence. When driving alone I usually have some talk radio station on. Music? Hmmm… maybe when I’m cleaning house or something.
I’m in my new digs in the Seattle area now and feeling a little sad and alone. I bought some decent speakers for my computer for the first time and after listening to some Boomershoot sounds put on some music to test them out. It sounds good. It helps bring the mood up a bit. On the drive over I played music in the most geeky way I could think: I played Elvis, The Ventures, and Uncle Bonsai on the laptop computer running off the inverter, the laptop sound output went into a small FM transmitter which I either played into the FM receiver in my new cell-phone and headphones or through the car radio. The laptop also had Microsoft Streets and Trips with the GPS unit running to track my speed, altitude, and of the course exact position. Then there was the walkie-talkie on my arm to communicate chat with Barb and her sister in the Jeep. They came over to catch a cheap flight to the D.C. area to visit Jason.
So… anyway on to the music meme (and Van Halen on the computer):
1) How much music do I have?
Probably 100 albums total. About an even split between CD’s, cassette tapes (I used to see lots of eight tracks but never had one myself), and vinyl albums. I haven’t listened to vinyl since Kim (or was it Xenia?) broke the needle on the turntable when she was just a toddler. James broke it too and we replaced it only to have it destroyed again by one of his sisters.
2) What was the last CD I bought?
Probably the complete collection of Uncle Bonsai a few months ago. I’m not sure. I had a couple of their albums on a pirated cassette and really wanted it legit and in good quality.
3) What am I listening to right now?
You Really Got Me, Van Halen.
4) Five songs I listen to that mean a lot to me?
N/A is probably the best answer. Music doesn’t doesn’t really have “meaning” for me. It’s a pleasant distraction from boredom. If pressed for something more than that I would say That’s What You Get for Loving Me, by Gordon Lightfoot. I don’t listen to it very often, maybe once every couple of years. But over 30 years ago Barb and I were listening to Gordon Lightfoot in the car while parked overlooking Orofino and the Clearwater valley. I decided I would kiss her for the first time when the next song came on. That was the song. Then there was Having My Baby (You’re) that played on the radio immediately after another milestone in our relationship. I can’t remember the last time I listened to that.
5) I’m passing this meme on to:
Whoever wants it.
Reloading your own ammo
I have my own reloading press and have reload 9mm, .40 S&W, .223, 30.06, and 300 Win Mag. These days it’s mostly .40 S&W and I probably average few hundred rounds a month. My guess is I’m on the low to mid range in terms of home reloaders. Ry points out someone on the high end.
Passports to get RFID chip implants
Here is some disturbing news:
All U.S. passports will be implanted with remotely readable computer chips starting in October 2006, the Bush administration has announced.
Sweeping new State Department regulations issued Tuesday say that passports issued after that time will have tiny radio frequency ID (RFID) chips that can transmit personal information including the name, nationality, sex, date of birth, place of birth and digitized photograph of the passport holder. Eventually, the government contemplates adding additional digitized data such as “fingerprints or iris scans.”
Over the last year, opposition to the idea of implanting RFID chips in passports has grown amidst worries that identity thieves could snatch personal information out of the air simply by aiming a high-powered antenna at a person or a vehicle carrying a passport. Out of the 2,335 comments on the plan that were received by the State Department this year, 98.5 percent were negative. The objections mostly focused on security and privacy concerns.
…
In regulations published Tuesday, the State Department claims it has addressed privacy concerns. The chipped passports “will not permit ‘tracking’ of individuals,” the department said. “It will only permit governmental authorities to know that an individual has arrived at a port of entry–which governmental authorities already know from presentation of non-electronic passports–with greater assurance that the person who presents the passport is the legitimate holder of the passport.”
To address Americans’ concerns about ID theft, the Bush administration said the new passports will be outfitted with “antiskimming material” in the front cover to “mitigate” the threat of the information being surreptitiously scanned from afar. It’s not clear, though, how well the technique will work against high-powered readers that have been demonstrated to read RFID chips from about 160 feet away.
Sure, shielding the passports is a good idea. If they weren’t made with that built-in the private market would have supplied them.
The article goes on to discuss some concerns about the security of the encryption and some legal issues but misses one of my big concerns. The government tries to reassure us that everything is going to be okay because they are making efforts to make sure only they will be able to read the information. And that they will only read the information at ports of entry. It’s government that is the biggest threat to the individual person. It’s government abuse that I’m worried about. This technology makes it practical for automated reading, recording, and tracking of the passports. When the passports were nothing but paper it took a human time to retrieve the information and verify it’s validity. It simply wasn’t practical to put a human at the entrance to every government building, every boarding gate for planes and trains, and monitor every banking transaction. This technology changes that. And it is likely to creep into more and more of our lives. Then there will be little reason to not require the same technology on whatever government mandated ID U.S. citizens will have. The temptation will be just too great.
And of course mandated ID and/or tracking of people violates my Jews in the Attic Test.
Hint to criminals using computers
Hint to criminals using computers–don’t. The following is just the tip of the iceburg. From Bruce Schneier:
Many color laser printers embed secret information in every page they print, basically to identify you by. Here, the EFF has cracked the code of the Xerox DocuColor series of printers.
Update: For those of you who didn’t really get what I was hinting on the first pass here it is spelled out for you:
Schoen said that the existence of the encoded information could be a threat to people who live in repressive governments or those who have a legitimate need for privacy. It reminds him, he said, of a program the Soviet Union once had in place to record sample typewriter printouts in hopes of tracking the origins of underground, self-published literature.
Gun dictionary updates part four
- Cap
- Charge
- Junk Gun
- Nipple
- Percussion Arm
- Powder Charge
- Saturday Night Special
- Shot (updated to include information about various shot sizes)
- Shotshell
- Wad
Gun dictionary updates
I updated the gun dictionary web page on Boomershoot.org again:
Transparent Aluminum
In Star Trek IV there is made mention of transparent aluminum. Very cool idea, huh? Well… science and engineering have nearly caught up with that science fiction material. It’s aluminum oxynitride that the US Air Force is testing for transparent armor:
ALONtm is a ceramic compound with a high compressive strength and durability. When polished, it is the premier transparent armor for use in armored vehicles, said. 1st Lt. Joseph La Monica, transparent armor sub-direction lead
“The substance itself is light years ahead of glass,” he said, adding that it offers “higher performance and lighter weight.”
Traditional transparent armor is thick layers of bonded glass. The new armor combines the transparent ALONtm piece as a strike plate, a middle section of glass and a polymer backing. Each layer is visibly thinner than the traditional layers.
ALONtm is virtually scratch resistant, offers substantial impact resistance, and provides better durability and protection against armor piercing threats, at roughly half the weight and half the thickness of traditional glass transparent armor, said the lieutenant.
In a June 2004demonstration, an ALONtm test pieces held up to both a .30 caliber Russian M-44 sniper rifle and a .50 caliber Browning Sniper Rifle with armor piercing bullets. While the bullets pierced the glass samples, the armor withstood the impact with no penetration.
In extensive testing, ALONtm has performed well against multiple hits of .30 caliber armor piercing rounds — typical of anti-aircraft fire, Lieutenant La Monica said. Ttests focusing on multiple hits from .50 caliber rounds and improvised explosive devices are in the works.
Thanks to Ry for the email on the topic.
Gun dictionary updates
Much to my surprise the Gun Dictionary page on the Boomershoot web site is one of the most popular web pages on the site (thanks to Stephanie Sailor for suggesting this page). Even the USPSA has linked to the page on their information for the press page (from the same page they also link to my Gun Myths and Truth page). Because of that I frequently get requests for the definition of a firearm related term. Just today I received a request for the definition of ACP, as in .45 ACP. I updated the page with this definition and a few others. In the past week or two I have added the following words:
- ACP
- Autoloader
- Automatic
- Arsenal
- Compound
- Regulate (as in regulation of barrel convergence)
- Regulate (as in a well regulated militia)
If you have suggestions for other terms let me know. Feel free to supply your own definition and save me a little bit of work.
New Orleans is flooding again
I just heard on the radio there is two feet of water from hurricane Rita in parts of New Orleans as water over-topped one of the levees.
They really need to give it up. Let it be an archaeological site for future generations. New Orleans might recover from this battle and the next, but the war will be lost along with resources that would be better invested in a new city.
See also:
Another shot at New Orleans
Now do you believe me?
New Orleans was most vulnerable major city to hurricanes
More levee info
Quote of the day–Ronald Reagan
Information is the oxygen of the modern age. It seeps through the walls topped by barbed wire, it wafts across the electrified borders.
Ronald Reagan
Guardian (London, 14 June 1989)
Another network outage
The connection between my ISP and Sprint to the Internet went down about 30 minutes ago. Less than half the people in Moscow can reach my websites, the rest of the world will just have to get by without them somehow until the connection is restored. Last time this happened it was a fiber optic cable that was severed by some construction north of Moscow.
Update 12:00: From our ISP’s website:
Line to the Internet is Down
Starting around 8:20 this morning, our Sprint backbone to the Internet went down. Sprint long distance and cell phones are also down. Sprint is aware of this problem and is working on it. 9/22/05 9:00 a.m.11:11 a.m. We heard scuttlebutt from a usually reliable source that the fiber optic line near Worley was cut, and that they expect it to be back up by noon.
There is a bunch of highway construction going on all along state highway 95. Worley is on 95 north of Moscow.
Update 13:00: From our IPS’s website:
12:40 p.m. Nope. No additional word.
Update 14:05: From our IPS’s website:
1:50 p.m. Verizon says the fiber should be repaired by 2:30.
Update 15:54 From our IPS’s website (heavy sigh):
3:50 p.m. Nope.
Update from the Lewiston Morning Tribune:
Long-distance phone service cut in area
Several communities in Latah, Nez Perce and Clearwater counties lost their long-distance telephone service Thursday morning when an underground line was cut by an Idaho Transportation Department crew near Worley, Idaho.
According to Kevin Laverty, a Verizon media relations spokesman, most Idaho long-distance customers south of the cut line to around Orofino were without service until about 4 p.m. when repairs had been completed.
Affected towns included Moscow, Peck and Orofino, according to Laverty.