Damned Integrated Batteries

So Apple announced their new laptops. The plus side is they did a massive price drop, the down side is all the unibody MacBooks have an integrated battery. This means you can easily swap out a dead battery and replace it with a charged one nor replaced a worn out battery without taking apart the entire machine.

All this simple because Steve Jobs hates seems. Seriously the iPods, the iPhones, and now their laptops all have non-removable batteries.

There is no downside to batteries that are easily replaceable. And batteries do wear out. Now most people will have to take their laptop to an Apple store to get the battery replaced instead of being able to easily do it themselves. Thankfully ifixit.com has posted a nice picture filled page covering how to disassemble the unibody MacBook Pros with integrated batteries…

http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/First-Look/MacBook-Pro-17-Inch-Unibody/618/1

I’m doubting this is a deal breaker for myself but bloody Hell is irritates me.

There’s Lies, There’s Damned Lies, and Then There is the Brady Campaign

Via Snow Flakes in Hell it appears Doug Pennington of The Brady Bunch believes all the federal gun control laws can be counted on one hand…

http://www.sundaypaper.com/More/Archives/tabid/98/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/4142/Gun-Loving-SonsofGuns.aspx

Hell he doesn’t think he even needs a full hand…

What people don’t realize, at the national level, at least, is that I can count the federal gun laws on the books on one hand. I don’t even need all five fingers to do it

Hell the Brady Campaign doesn’t even agree with that. Straight from their mouths (it’s an archive.org link of their sight because I refuse to give those pricks any traffic and they will probably change this) there are six federal gun control laws (Doug must be a kind of freaky seven fingered mutant or something)…

http://web.archive.org/web/20080115230225/http://www.bradycampaign.org/legislation/federal/pages.php?page=6fedlaws

Of course Snow Flakes in Hell points out some other federal gun control methods.

Source: http://www.snowflakesinhell.com/2009/06/08/can-count-federal-gun-laws-on-one-hand/

Overkill Defined

Every time I mention I want to eventually get a .50 BMG or a machine gun people tell me they are overkill. Well they apparently don’t know what overkill is. THIS is overkill…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-388_Davy_Crockett

I present for your amusement the M-388. The M-388 is a system involving a recoilless rifle that shoots a nuclear warhead. No this isn’t some exotic weapon from the Fallout series of games, this is a real weapon that was actually produced during The Cold War.

The idea was to have a bunch of soldiers with these and various other nuclear weapons between the border of The Soviet Union and Europe. If Russia tried to invade the idea was to make the border a total radioactive wasteland for at least 48 hours, enough time to get NATO forces into position.

The M-388 could propel a projectile with up to half a kiloton payload to a distance of two and a half miles. The radioactive fallout would be instantly lethal to all people within 500 feet. Of course the recoilless rifle was dreadfully inaccurate so the three man team operating it more or less just lobbed the projectile at the largest Soviet group they could find and figure the concept of blast radius would take care of the problem. Certainly a most interesting weapon.

All I can say is overkill in a semi-portable weapon has been defined.

Wow Anti-Gunners are Assholes

Aren’t they always touting their moral superiority? Guess they aren’t so superior…

http://www.ar15.com/forums/topic.html?b=1&f=5&t=881958

So an established gun range has encountered a problem many ranges eventually do. Even though it was built out in the country society eventually encroached. Now the people who live nearby are mad because apparently shooting ranges make noise. How did they respond? By vandalizing his property of course.

Pricks.

New York on it’s Way for Micro Stamping

Another flawed idea by the anti-gunners is making it’s way through New York state…

http://www.nraila.org/Legislation/Read.aspx?ID=4936

Senate Bill 4397, if passed into law, would make selling any semi-automatic handgun without so called micro stamping technology illegal.

For those of you out of the loop micro stamping is a method where the firearm marks every round it fires with some kind of unique identifier. The unique identifier is suppose to help police track a person illegally using a gun. Of course this requirement would jack up the price of the gun and won’t work to boot.

Let’s take a look at the basic idea. So the gun it supposed to stamp an identifier onto each round fire. In that case you have three options, stamp the bullet, stamp the case, or stamp both. Stamping the case would seem rather idiotic since you can just pick those up and take them with you. Stamping the bullet is equally idiotic since it’s mostly likely going to deform on impact with something which would distort and stamped on identifier.

So really nothing is accomplished. Further more the stamp inside the gun can easily be filed off so nothing is stamped on either the bullet or the case. So why would this get proposed? More importantly who would propose it?

Well the answer to that is ID Dynamics the company whom is the sole owner of the patent on micro stamping technology. The man who invented it, Todd Lizotte (I’d drop contact information but I can’t find any, if you know any means of contacting him let me know), claims it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread. And he’s right it is for him and his company.

He’s of course stated that his company is willing to provide the technology royalty free. That’s an old trick really because even with the patent most gun manufacturers could not create the required tools in house to enact this technology, and certainly not in a timely manner. Because of that companies who have such patents often are willing to see the equipment required to use the patent, at a nominal fee of course.

Micro stamping accomplishes nothing besides increasing the cost of manufacturing guns. And that cost is then placed on the consumers. Remember if the anti-gunners can’t outright ban guns they will do the next best thing, ensure nobody can afford them (this trick was used in the abolishment of so called “Saturday night specials.”). Remember just because they can’t take your right doesn’t mean they can’t find a way to prevent you from exercising that right.

People of Congo Town Take up Arms in Self Defense

This article is actually dated a few months back but it’s a great story nonetheless…

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29167366

Assholes from The Lord’s Resistance Army were harassing the people of Bangadi. They requested help from the military and the United Nations sit-on-their-ass, I mean peacekeeping, force. Neither group responded so the citizens of Bangadi did the logical thing, took up arms and defended their town. From the article…

So Akoyo called a town meeting and told everyone to bring whatever weapons they had: pre-World War II rifles, homemade shotguns, lances, swords, machetes, hunting knives, bows with sheaths of poisoned arrows.

The women came armed with kitchen knives and log-sized wooden pestles used to pound yams into flour.

And with these ancient rifles, MacGyvered shotguns, and various melee weapons they fought off the pricks of The Lord’s Resistance Army. Hell when this article was written the citizens thought there town was so nice they fought the bastards off twice. And because of these peoples’ inspirational stand…

News of Bangadi’s success — and the lack of military protection — have spurred hundreds of villages to form self-defense groups, according to Avril Benoit, a spokeswoman for Medecins Sans Frontieres.

That’s right other people in other villages are arming themselves and making a statement that they aren’t taking shit from those who would do them harm.

These guys further show what a community working together can accomplish. If people of cities of “developed” nations would ban together to defend each other we would see a drastic decrease in crime. Oh wait I forgot most “developed” nations’ governments won’t do shit to defend their citizens but if you try to defend yourself or other members of your community your government may very well move in and arrest you. Just ask Britain.

A Court with Common Sense, This is a Rare One

A while back (before I started this blog) there was a rather frightening story…

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/04/boston-college-prompt-commands-are-suspicious

A computer science student at Boston College was arrested. His room mate accused the student of “hacking” into the school’s computer systems and changing other students’ grades as well as ending out e-mails purporting the room mate was gay. But the reasoning on the warrant from the police is what was the scariest. The warrant for his arrest stated…

uses two different operating systems to hide his illegal activities. One is the regular B. C. operating system and the other is a black screen with white font which he uses prompt commands on.

So the evidence the police has was the fact the student was dual booting Windows and Linux (Linux is specifically mentioned later in the EFF article). Apparently Linux was being used to hide the student’s illegal activities. I mean we all know anything run via a command prompt is an operating system for only the most serious business of the serious business hackers.

Lord knows I could easily be arrested under such justification. Thankfully the Massachusets Supreme Court threw the case out…

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/06/update_on_compu.html

It’s nice to see some common sense dealing with potential computer crime still exists. Normally simply accusing somebody is a “hacker” is enough to get a court case. Couple that with a lawyer who can spew enough technical jargon, no matter how incorrect the jargon is used, and it is enough to convict the suspect.

Beware Greeks Bearing Gifts

Especially if those Greeks are a Japanese University…

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Japan-university-gives-away-apf-15379360.html?.v=3

Aoyama Gakuin University located in the city of Tokyo is giving 550 students free iPhones. Sounds like a great deal huh? Well wait until you see the string attached to this one…

The gadget will work as a tool for studies, but it also comes with GPS, a satellite navigation system that automatically checks on its whereabouts. The university plans to use that as a way check attendance.

By check attendance they mean track the students’ whereabouts. So as long as you’re willing to have your university actively track you everywhere you go (with the phone at least) you to can have a free phone.

Of course I am curious how they are tracking the phones. Because it can’t be with software on the phone since third parties can’t write software that runs in the background on an iPhone. Maybe they are jailbreaking the phones. Either way doing a full reset would take care of either scenario. Granted the school would also notice that any reset phone is no longer reporting tracking information back to them.

The other method is either the government or cell phone carriers must be giving the university access to the tracking information. In a country without freedom like Japan this is of course very possible.

Either way there is an easy solution. If you’re a student with one of these “free” phone just give it to a buddy who’s going to class when you want to skip. The phone can only report back where it is, so if it’s in class so are you.