This guy is even more obsesive and geeky than I am. He shot about 2350 rounds to get this data.
Category Archives: Technology
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.
Bullet Penetration
The second printing of this book is coming out next month. For gun geeks this is a great book. Lots of math and experimental results to back up the theory. I have a copy of the first printing someplace. I got it probably 7 or 8 years ago and immediately went out and did some of my own experiments to verify things. The results looked good. From the web page:
Bullet Penetration describes the analysis and testing of a model of bullet penetration dynamics; this model is a significant technical advance over what has been heretofore available. This penetration model is directly related to understanding the production of an incapacitating wound by the bullet parameters (velocity, weight, shape, diameter). Incapacitation from wound trauma is a complex subject that has been controversial for many decades, and all aspects of this subject are discussed in detail in Bullet Penetration. The new results in this book are described in a style and vocabulary that make the basic principles and results understandable to the layman. This outstanding book should be read by everyone who is critically dependent on handgun bullet performance as well as all those with an interest in any aspect of wound ballistics.
The topics covered in Bullet Penetration include physiological and psychological effects in incapacitation from wound trauma, modeling of bullet penetration, and modeling of bullet expansion. The realities associated with the desired “one shot stop” and the ignorance and/or fraud in “combat data” claims are discussed in detail. The primary focus is on handgun ammunition, but the principles and many of the results are also applicable to rifle ammunition. The book has 303 pages, including 69 pages of bullet photographs and graphs of test results.
Microsofties to the rescue
I remember attending a party once where most people did not know who I was and where I worked at the time (a contractor for Microsoft). I was just sort of hanging out and listening (that’s really active for me, often I just find a place to take a nap if I have to go to a party). This woman started talking about how selfish rich people are and how they should be made to be more generous. “So”, I asked, “What is your source of data for the claim that rich people are selfish?” I know, that was a below the belt punch on a defenseless communist as per the following:
No one has the right to destroy another person’s belief by demanding empirical evidence.
Ann Landers, nationally syndicated advice columnist and Director of Handgun Control, Inc.
But being the scientist/engineer and generally socially clueless type I asked anyway. The response was, “Do you have any evidence they are not?” That was actually a fairly decent response–had I not been working at Microsoft for several years and knew many multi-millionaires. Other people could have mentioned numerous famous foundations and philanthropists but I chose to give examples I had witnessed. I told of going to Denny’s in Bellevue, a short distance from Microsoft, with other people form Microsoft for coffee and desert. We hung around for an hour or two talking, sipping our drinks, and nibbling on our pies and cakes. As we left we tossed money on the table to cover our bill and a tip. There was probably six or seven people but the excess money for the tip was over $60. No one cared if they got change for the $20 they tossed on the table. That was common whenever I went out for meals with “rich people” from Microsoft–a $20 bill WAS change to them. I further told the clueless commie that the head of my favorite charity (I didn’t tell her SAF was my favorite at the time) came in to talk to a club I belonged to at Microsoft (the Microsoft Gun Club) and told us that every year the largest single donation they received was from Microsoft Corporation. Microsoft matches employee donations dollar for dollar to qualified 501(C)(3) organizations if you do the proper paperwork. Those “rich selfish Microsoft employees” and their greedy corporation donations made a huge difference to that charitable organization. In my several years of being around “rich people” I didn’t know a single person I would have considered selfish. I even knew one manager who offered to pay for one of his employee’s sex change operation out of his own pocket (in return he wanted the testicles in a jar to put on his desk–but that’s another story I didn’t tell her). In short, I had a very limited sample of probably 50 to 100 people in one geographical location at one company, but every bit of data I had contradicted her claim. She didn’t have anything to offer and we changed subject–I wasn’t so clueless that I pushed the issue with her.
Ry, over at Mindless Bit Spew, is currently working at Microsoft and today reports on the activities of just one Microsoft private pilot who got time off from work to help with Katrina relief efforts. Here is the first paragraph of his story published in a newsgroup internal to Microsoft:
Watching the destruction of Hurricane Katrina & the effect it was having on people’s lives, I wanted to help somehow. Our neighborhood organized a lunch, and we raised $3000 in just a few hours via donations by selling sandwiches to people simply driving buy. The company that I work at building a game called Flight Simulator, Microsoft Corporation, matched the donation. Wow, I was very impressed how people rallied and came together to support individuals thousands of miles away. Although I thought this effort on my neighborhoods part was awesome, I wanted to contribute more directly to the relief effort. I searched online for a way to contribute my airplane to fly people & supplies to the disaster stricken area.
People that bash capitalism need some exposure to reality. Personally I know of no better place than what you see at Microsoft. They’ve done some things wrong but the scales are so heavily weighted on the positive side you have to be actively avoiding reality to claim socialism/communism/fascism or whatever government scheme you might imagine is a “better way”.
Traffic spike
Below is a graph of the traffic on my blog for the past week. As I mentioned yesterday there was a spike in activity. If I get much more I’ll need something more than a 2400 baud modem to handle it*.
* No. My websites are not actually connected via a 2400 baud modem. The web server, on top of my gun safe, is connected via a 768K DSL line.
Business idea
I have had a lot of experience recently with detecting and tracking visitors to my websites that have an unusual interest in what I have to say. Some of this is automated but a lot is still just grunt work. I could do a lot more automation–to the point I think I could sell the service or perhaps the program. I’m not sure on this last point. Their may sufficient false positives that a quick look by a human eye is needed to make the final judgment. Anyway, there are two things I would like to ask of my fellow bloggers and webmasters:
- Would you be interested in a service that monitors your log files and was capable of giving you a notice within a few hours that someone was taking an unusual interest in you? It might prevent you from being Dooced.
- Do you have access to log files that I could use for test and development purposes? I would even pay small amounts of money for log files from people who have actually been Dooced or “investigated.” “Normal” log files would also be needed but I wouldn’t pay money for those.
Send me an email if you have some input. Use nodooce@joehuffman.org
You would think they would know better
Via a pointer from Mindless Bit Spew. The Dutch are planning to open a “cradle to grave” electronic file on every child.
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands – The Dutch government plans to open an electronic file on every child at birth as a tool to spot and protect the troubled kids of the future.
Beginning Jan. 1, 2007, all citizens will be tracked from cradle to grave in a single database — including health, education, family and police records — the health ministry said Tuesday.
As a privacy safeguard, no single person or agency will be able to access all contents of a file. But organizations can raise “red flags” in the dossier to caution other agencies about problems, ministry spokesman Jan Brouwer said.
The intention is to protect troubled children, Brouwer said. Until now, schools and police have been unable to communicate with each other about truancy records and criminality, which are often linked.
“Child protection services will say, ‘Hey, there’s a warning flag from the police. There’s another one from school. There’s another one from the doctor,” Brouwer said. “Something must be going on and it’s time to call the parents in for a meeting.”
Every child will get a Citizens Service Number, making it easier to keep track of children with problems even when their families move, said Secretary of Health Clemence Ross.
“Safety, guidance, education and supervision are incredibly important for the development of children,” Ross said.
All Dutch births are currently registered with local authorities.
Doesn’t it always seem to be “for the children”? It has often been said the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I claim it is paved with the skulls of the tens of millions of people, including children, who died at the hands of their own governments intent on doing good at any cost.
It must be the Dutch forgot about the little incident back in the late ’30s and ’40s when those type of records were found to be quite useful–when tracking down all the people with “Jewish blood”. And how is that “privacy safeguard” enforced? Is there anything that can’t be changed by a simple act of the lawmakers? As I said in the context of a U.S. Universal Biometric Identification the safeguards that I would require to be put in place in order to believe the contents of the database would not abused would cause the most enthusiastic Auschwitz guard to cringe at my creativity in punishment methods, violate numerous protections of the Bill of Rights, and probably inspire several additions to it. And, I now add, enforceable by any person anywhere on the planet that has a reasonable suspicion there was abuse of that database.