I should be able to resume posting shortly.

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2009-08-29

Homeland Security said on Thursday that it performed approximately 1,000 laptop searches from October 1, 2008 through August 11, 2009. One way to protect yourself from these searches is to use whole-disk encryption from a company like PGP and make sure your laptop is completely powered down when crossing the border.

This will stop them from seeing your files but it won't stop them from holding onto your machine. If you must travel, you might want to look at using VPN technology on a cheapo netbook (along with running CCleaner and Eraser at military-grade shred-level.) If they hang onto your machine for longer than it takes to open it and verify that it's a computer and not a munition storage device, the chances are good that they'll break it for you when they realize that you haven't left them anything to look at. Having that capability routinely in place may go along way toward proving that you were framed if they decide to put a present on your machine and then arrest you. It should be clear to everyone that searching people's electronic devices at the border has no positive effect on anyone's security because the whole process is completely circumventable, and only serves as security theater with the added benefit to the ego-challenged of making it easy to victimize innocent people. Anyone that supports this kind of thing needs to be returned to the private sector.
I'd like to see all of Pittsburgh's citizens 'open carry' during the entire G-20. The people planning the security seem to be saying "Hey, I bet this is a good enough reason to trot out our gun-ban agenda." Maybe this whole group will be gone after the next election cycle.
Defense attorney Rich McGee painted Holmes as a diligent security guard who got behind Villegas’ car to try to prevent him from driving away drunk. He said Villegas used his Saturn Ion as “a battering ram,” pushing Holmes out of his way by backing the car up and striking him. Holmes believed he was about to be run over as Villegas finished backing out of his parking spot, according to McGee.

Hmmm ... I don't think positioning yourself so that someone can't get away without going through you and then killing them when they try to leave anyway qualifies as self-defense. On the plus side, this argument usually works for the police, so I'd give him about a 50:50 chance of getting acquitted.

2009-08-28

I think that anything beyond giving them a sandwich and telling them that their role in the conflict is over should be considered torture. So much of our success in the world has come in the form of the citizens of our enemy countries looking the other way, providing info at risk to themselves, slipping a loaf of bread to our boys when they're on the run behind enemy lines and generally hoping that we win. They don't do that because we torture their sons. They do it because they believe that the best thing that can happen to their sons is that they be captured alive by our guys. Short-sightedness has made that a much tougher sell these days ...

2009-08-25

Suffredini raised some eyebrows when, at a public hearing last month, he declared flatly that the plan is to de-orbit the station in 2016. He addressed his comments to a panel chaired by former aerospace executive Norman Augustine that is charged by the Obama administration with reviewing the entire human spaceflight program. Everything is on the table — missions, goals, rocket design. And right there in the mix is this big, fancy space laboratory circling the Earth from 220 miles up. The cost of the station is both a liability and, paradoxically, a virtue. A figure commonly associated with the ISS is that it will ultimately cost the United States and its international partners about $100 billion. That may add to the political pressure to keep the space laboratory intact and in orbit rather than seeing it plunging back to Earth so soon after completion. "If we've spent a hundred billion dollars, I don't think we want to shut it down in 2015," Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) told Augustine's committee.

Some interesting background info, too ...

Seattle’s officially lame-duck Mayor Greg Nickels and the District of Columbia’s delegate-for-life Eleanor Holmes-Norton have something in common that has already gotten one in a lot of trouble and the other may be asking for some. Both seem to believe that constitutional rights can be suspended. Nickels lost the gun owner vote in Seattle and has now lost his job, coming in third in the primary election last week, because he’s spent the last 14 months waging a quiet war on gun rights and Washington State’s model preemption statute. He had threatened to ban all firearms, including those legally carried by citizens licensed to pack concealed handguns, not to mention the growing cadre of citizens who carry openly, from city property by executive order. Advised that he lacked the authority, he promised to do it, anyway.
Gotta love it ...

Unlike with software-based encryption schemes, there's no delay associated with locking or unlocking the Ammo. In fact, the process was instantaneous no matter how much data was on the 160GB drive I used when testing the enclosure. More importantly, locking and unlocking really couldn't be simpler. There are no passwords to remember, no software to install, and nothing else that might otherwise confuse your mother. An LED on the magazine even switches between red and green to indicate whether the drive is in a locked state. Encryption doesn't slow the Ammo's transfer rates, either. With an unpartitioned drive inside the magazine, HD Tach measured sustained read and write speeds of 33 and 31MB/s, respectively. Those transfer rates held up with real-world file transfers to and from the drive, as well. 33MB/s still isn't all that quick, relatively speaking, but it's as good as we've seen from an external USB storage device.

Kinds cool, but the RFID is a weak point ...

2009-08-24

2009-08-22

Florida passed its “stand your ground” law out of recognition that the old law favored criminals at the expense of their innocent victims. When the law may impose a severe penalty upon crime victims who defend themselves against criminals, those victims will hesitate to act. Those crime victims who thoroughly know the law will stop to double and triple check whether their self defense action will perfectly meet the law’s intricate requirements for justified self defense. Those crime victims that don’t know the law will also hesitate, often not shooting when they should, out of fear that they might end up prosecuted for murder. That hesitation gives the ruthless criminal, who doesn’t care about the law or the victim’s life, an opportunity to harm that victim.

I wish the other states would catch up a little quicker ...
I'm glad we're talking about going back to the moon and on to the planets ...

2009-08-20

Hmmm ...

In another news interview, the man told a reporter that he is "absolutely totally opposed to health care in this way in this manner, stealing it from people. I don't think that's appropriate," he said. One YouTube blogger suggested that the man was actually an "ACORN activist" posing as a right-wing gun nut. But there was no evidence to support that claim, and in a separate YouTube video, the man espoused clearly conservative views, not only about health care, but about Second Amendment rights. "It seems to me like the most violent places in the country are the places that have the strictest gun laws," the man said, citing Washington, DC as an example. "DC is a very violent place, and they're the worst on guns," he said

Also ...

Yup ...

2009-08-19

Milwaukee, WI Mayor Tom Barrett was leaving the WI state fair on Saturday night when he heard a woman scream for help. Barrett began calling 911, at which point the suspect turned on Barrett and began beating him with a metal pipe. The suspect then fled, and Barrett was taken to a local hospital. Barrett was listed in stable condition at the hospital, and police are seeking the suspect. The woman was unharmed. I would like to start by offering my best wishes for a speedy recovery to Mayor Barrett. His willingness to come to the aid of a stranger, and endanger his life in doing so, should be commended.

It will be interesting to see how this affects him. It's possible that his politics will force him to say otherwise but typically anyone that finds that they actually do have the walendas to go for it will see the wisdom of having like-minded folk heavily armed.

Hmmm ...

2009-08-13

Animal MacYoung's site ...

Cool ...
And the reason is simple: These tough battles are helping them separate politicians who are merely strong supporters of gun rights and those who are 100 percent allies.

2009-08-12

How very unfortunate ...
Good password advice from Bruce ...

One holds something that looks like a crowbar. When the intruder brandishes it as if to strike, you raise the shotgun and fire. The blast knocks both thugs to the floor. One writhes and screams while the second man crawls to the front door and lurches outside. As you pick up the telephone to call police, you know you're in trouble. In your country, most guns were outlawed years before, and the few that are privately owned are so stringently regulated as to make them useless. Yours was never registered. Police arrive and inform you that the second burglar has died. They arrest you for First Degree Murder and Illegal Possession of a Firearm. When you talk to your attorney, he tells you not to worry: authorities will probably plea the case down to manslaughter.

I wonder if the Brits ever imagined that it would come to this ...

2009-08-09

Hmmm ...

2009-08-05

I can't see that working ...
Abstract. Web users are shown an invalid certificate warning when their browser cannot validate the identity of the websites they are visiting. While these warnings often appear in benign situations, they can also signal a man-in-the-middle attack. We conducted a survey of over 400 Internet users to examine their reactions to and understanding of current SSL warnings. We then designed two new warnings using warnings science principles and lessons learned from the survey. We evaluated warnings used in three popular web browsers and our two warnings in a 100-participant, between-subjects laboratory study. Our warnings performed significantly better than existing warnings, but far too many participants exhibited dangerous behavior in all warning conditions. Our results suggest that, while warnings can be improved, a better approach may be to minimize the use of SSL warnings altogether by blocking users from making unsafe connections and eliminating warnings in benign situations.

This is true of security in general. Any time there is an uptick in false alarms, get ready to be attacked.

(via Bruce)

2009-08-04

Mmmm ... tasty!


Which they then take to Boston to use because the folks in Vermont, NH and Maine are heavily armed and will kill them if they pull their stunts there.

An especially tragic case shows that effective self defense often requires a gun. On October 20th, 2008, KATV anchorwoman Anne Pressly was found unconscious and severely beaten in her own home, with every bone in her face broken. Days later, she died without ever regaining consciousness. A police investigation determined that she was robbed and sexually assaulted by her attacker. Police believe that she was the victim of a random home invasion robbery. It was also revealed that she apparently broke her hand while trying to fight off the attacker, in a commendable but ultimately unsuccessful attempt at self defense. A suspect was later arrested and is awaiting trial.

At the very least it shows that hitting people with your hands is only a good idea if your hands are genetically adequate for the task. Mine aren't so, as Bill Wallace used to say, I use my hands to push people away so I can kick them. Actually, the Yang 'classic' Tai Chi form is well suited to knee and elbow incorporation and you can definitely hit a lot harder without risking self-injury using knees and elbows than you can using your fists.

2009-08-02

The article doesn't say how the crime was executed so there is no way to know, based on the story, whether an alarm system would have made any difference. Assuming that a '$100 alarm system' had been in place, it would likely have only benefited her family if they had been armed and ready to go once the alarm started going off. The alarm going off itself won't protect anyone from someone that is there specifically to kill you.

Other officers say arming everybody makes it harder for them to tell the good guys from the bad guys. “And when you have multiple people potential pulling out guns, that's gonna totally go against our training and potentially create a chaos that we may not be prepared to handle," said a police officer in the audience.
The only configuration that will actually work in the 'Columbine' scenario is to have armed 'good guys' on hand and ready to go. That means teachers and students. Perhaps you need to change your training to accommodate the effective configuration.