Month: August 2009

Somebody Needs a Truck Load of Fresh Knickers

Because Lois Romano just shit hers. I found yet another interesting story via Snowflakes in Hell that amounts to normal pants shitting hysteria by an anti-gunner. I don’t know where to begin with this one so I’ll do the logical thing and start with the top. She starts of talking about Governor Corzine signing New Jersey’s one gun a month strangling bill. That’s probably the only fact in the entire article, the rest is emotional nonsense. Let us being:

f the New Jersey government was thinking of the good of the citizens of New Jersey and our federal lawmakers were thinking of the good of the citizens of our entire nation, they would be working day and night to see how to get rid of the guns in our country instead of allowing more to be on our streets.

So she is stating we should get rid of all guns in this country. Of course the Constitution doesn’t allow for that and cities such as Chicago and Washington D.C. that have strict gun bans aren’t free of shootings or even remotely close to it. In fact ask England how their gun ban is working out (Hint, if you read this blog you know it’s not). Next up:

The Second Amendment to our Constitution was signed into law on Dec. 15, 1791. I’m sure those signers are turning over in their graves as to how our government has allowed this amendment to be interpreted.

The Second Amendment was written as follows: “A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

I’m sighing and shaking my head again. Yet another dumb ass that is trying to use the militia argument. I’m not going into this again, as I’ve explained it a couple of times. Are your pants full of shit yet? Well if not she has more scare tactics:

I cannot see how these words mean that there should be “gun shows” where anyone can buy an Uzi, a missile launcher or any other weapon that our military uses. Why has our government allowed so many guns to be in our country? There were over 9,000 murders by shootings in our country last year. In England and other countries in Europe the number of murders by shooting in all these countries totaled less than 50.

OK stop the boat, where the Hell can I find a gun show that has missile launchers for sale? I’ve seen expended missile tubes before but those are from fire once and throw away weapon systems. Hence the tubes are useless beyond a collector’s item. Hell I want to see any gun show that offers any weapon our military uses beyond the M9 pistol. You can’t buy modern machine guns even if you go through the ATF bull shit and I don’t think our military uses anything that was produced before 1986 anymore. And possession of such a weapon without the tax stamp is a felony and hence illegal already.

And yes according to England’s own study the number of murder involving firearms was 38:

Firearm offences can be broken down by injury and this shows there were 38 firearm offences
recorded by the police that resulted in a fatal injury (i.e. homicides) in 2008/09, 15 offences
fewer than in 2007/08.

That does look good on paper. In fact it makes it appear as though gun control works as England has an almost complete ban on guns. Oh wait let us look at the overall violent crime rate in England. What’s that it’s two times that of the United State’s? In addition to that the study that was just linked to shows there is absolutely no correlation between less guns and less violent crime, in fact the opposite appears be to true:

It turns out that in nations where guns are less available, criminals manage to get them anyway. After decades of ever-stricter gun controls, England banned handguns and confiscated them from all permit holders in 1997. Yet by 2000, England had the industrialized world’s highest violent crime rate — twice that of the U.S. Despite the confiscation of law-abiding Englishmen’s handguns, a 2002 report of England’s National Crime Intelligence Service lamented that while “Britain has some of the strictest gun laws in the world, [i]t appears that anyone who wishes to obtain a firearm [illegally] will have little difficulty in doing so.”

So although the number of murders involving guns has went down in England after their gun ban violent crime as a whole increase. This may have something to do with the fact criminals feel safer going after prey that is unarmed. Let’s continue with the pants shitting hysteria:

We are not living in the days of lawlessness. We have police departments in every town and city in our country. We have federal law enforcement officers. We have the National Guard in case of civil riots. We do not need to have every citizen carrying a gun. Some states even allow people to walk around with their loaded guns.

When seconds count the police are minutes away. It takes much less time for a thug to murder you then it does for the police to figure out where you are and get to your location. Maybe if the police had personal teleportation devices that wouldn’t be the case but sad to say they don’t. Hence for those minutes it takes them to get there you are on your own. If I’m my own against a criminal I want something to at least equalize the struggle, that’s exactly what a gun does.

I like her mention that some states allow citizens to carry around loaded guns. In fact 48 states do with Wisconsin and Illinois being the only two hold outs (Although Wisconsin legally allows open carry). If gun crime had increased after passing carry laws I promise you the laws would have been repealed, but that’s not the case. In fact most states notice a drop in crime rate after passing carry laws. And so it continues:

There are about 35 adults living on my street. If we each purchase a gun a month, in one year there will be at least 420 guns on my street. This will never happen because we are all law-abiding, sane people and trust our police department to maintain law and order in our little town. On the other hand, there are those who will be happy to be able to gather this number of guns by legal means or not.

I’m glad you trust your police department. I trust mine as well. I trust them to show up after the crime has been committed and try to figure out who did it and where they went. That is their job after all, to dispense justice after a crime has been committed. Also what does it matter if you own 10, 20, or even 1,000 guns? You can use at most two (A pistol in each hand, which is dreadfully useless) at one time and there is a limit to the number you can carry on your person.

And she mentions people will gather these guns by legal means or not. Well I have to say I’ve got bad news for you, if somebody is currently willing to get guns illegally making guns illegal won’t stop them. Ask England. Since England has an almost complete ban on guns there should be no crimes involving guns correct? Too bad that’s not the case. Luckily we’re almost at the end, because the smell of shit is really starting to stink here:

It doesn’t matter if these stores check out the credentials of the prospective buyer. We all know that the number of forged credentials probably outnumber the legitimate number of credentials in our country.

I’d like to know where you came up with that. According to the FBI in 2008 12,709,023 background checks were performed. In order for what Lois said to be true at least 6,354,512 of those credentials would have to be forged. She is saying that the most likely event is over 6 million credentials were forged in 2008 by gun buyers. If there were the case you would think the FBI would stumble upon that and investigate. Having over 50% of their NICS checks end up being done through forged identities would indicate a MASSIVE organized crime effort. I’d really like her to produce a source that gave her the opinion she has. Anyways we have one last paragraph that she wrote:

So now I probably will be getting calls from NRA members telling me that guns don’t kill people. My answer to them is, “People kill people using guns!”

Oh my God, people kill people using guns! Guess what people kill people using knives, cars, poison, lamps, sticks, stones, weed whackers, water, stairs, and almost anything else that exists. Her implication with that saying is since people kill people with guns then we must ban guns. Likewise that means she wants to ban everything people can use to kill other people. Well she better cut off her arms and legs then sew her mouth shut (Actually it would be nice if she did) since all of those can be used to kill people as well.

Yet another emotional anti-gun debate that doesn’t hold up once facts are injected into the claims. Too bad and so sad, thank you for play.

Fighting Piracy One Machete at a Time

You know that problem with piracy in Somalia the media no longer reports on? Well it’s still a problem, they just aren’t reporting it. In fact those zany pirates are still hijacking ships, and world leaders are still saying we can’t arm the crews of these ships. Well that didn’t stop 40 Egyptian fishermen from arming themselves and fucking some pirates up.

Although guns are always preferable they aren’t the only weapons that can be used as the story states:

A wounded pirate, found on a beach with machete wounds, said the crew attacked him and his colleagues with tools and then seized their weapons.

Machete wounds, ouch. Those Egyptians must have been hard core to be carrying machetes on board, good on them. But see how armed resistance works? You beat up or kill the people meaning to bring harm to you (If an armed force is invading your home, or in this case ship, you can safely assume they mean to do you harm) then you take their weapons if they are better then what you have. I love this part:

He said that at least two pirates died before the crew sailed towards waters patrolled by international navies.

That’s two pirates that won’t be harming anybody else in the future. If all the ships going into that area were armed properly I think we’d see a huge decline in piracy in the region. The pirates currently understand that most of the ships are unarmed and hence hijacking them is fairly low risk and easy. Since there is such a chance to make major money for little risk they keep pirating. Increase the risk and it doesn’t seem as profitable.

When “Security” Goes too Far

Via Random Nuclear Strikes we have an example of airliner security going way over board. An airplane going from Houston to Minneapolis had to land in Rochester due to severe weather. During this 6 hour delay the passengers were trapped and not allowed to leave the plane until security screeners returned for their shift.

During their stay on the plane the single toilet on board overflowed and of course you had angry people and babies screaming. Not what I’d call humane conditions. So why does the TSA require agents there before people trapped on a planet can get off? Well they don’t:

Airlines, not TSA, make the decision on whether or not to deplane passengers if there is a delay or diversion. TSA does not prohibit airlines deplaning passengers and re-boarding without screening as long as they don’t exit past the checkpoint and leave the secure area, regardless of whether or not TSA officers are conducting screening operations.

In addition, TSA has the ability to recall security officers and resume screening passengers after hours at the request of an airline or airport.

So the airliners could have let people off at any point. Hell they could have recalled a couple TSA officers if it made them feel better. But instead they left people trapped on a plane, probably due to CYA (Cover Your Ass) security. But here is the funny part in my book:

Continental Airlines did apologize to the passengers, saying their ordeal was “completely unacceptable” and offering refunds and vouchers for future flights.

I’m sorry if I ever was subjected to such conditions on an airliners the last thing I would do is fly with those pricks again.

Idiocy Astounds Me Once Again

OK I game across a rather disturbing story on Gizmodo. The summary of the story is some kid in Japan burned down the house his mother and him were living in because she threw out a plastic toy. An important thing to note here is his mother and himself were in the house when he set it ablaze. I really shouldn’t say some kid as this idiot was 29 but if you burn down a house because your mother threw out a toy you’re a fucking kid, period. Ironically people always point to Japan as a utopia society who has banned guns and has a low murder rate, they always neglect to mention suicides and stupid shit like this though.

The story isn’t as interesting as the commands on Gizmodo though. What follows is a rant about users on the Internet, hence it has no real value to anybody other than showing how stupid people can be. If you don’t care just do yourself a favor and skip the remainder of this post. Now that the disclaimer is out of the way let us dissect some of this posts, the first one I found extremely stupid was posted by a man named Bokusatsu_Tenshi:

I know there’s no justifying for what the guy did, but if I’m not mistaken, those where GUNPLAS, not “action figures”… which means they were all artisanally hand assembled and probably painted too. So it’s NOT about some dumb collection the guy spend some bucks on, but rather a hobby that probably cost him tons of work and money. So instead of posting prejudicial comments, maybe some of you should think how you would react if someone took something very precious to you, which you spent hours making, and just tossed it out as if it was nothing. People seem to think they are so fucking superior to the guy only because he lives with his mother and collects gunplas…

So he’s asking how would I react if I lived at home and my mother threw away my guns? I’d be pissed, I’d yell, but there is no way I’d burn the fucking house down. Up next we have Dr. Evil Genius:

Let’s see… take something that you hold in high-regard – your most treasured belonging and say… your significant vagina takes it upon herself to just throw your shit out. PLEASE tell me you’re gonna be happy about it. Everyone wants to criticize others over what is important to THEM. I think his reaction was inappropriate but have your girlfriend get your car towed to the Chop Shop and we’ll see how YOU react.

Once again I’m not going to burn her house down. If she had my vehicle towed to the chop shop I can assume the relationship is over otherwise I’d have no idea why she would do that (even then she wouldn’t). At most I may take her to court to get the value of the vehicle back so I could get some wheels. I’d also probably say some words not meant for children, but I do that in normal conversation so it’s nothing out of character. Then we have TheGZeus:

Your mother nags at you constantly your whole life, you probably can’t get a job doing anything that doesn’t make you want to die, and the only thing that makes you happy is the Gundam collection you’ve had since you were a child, and probably spent most of your allowance on. So for many years of your life most of your income goes towards these things, so their value gets inflated. When your mother throws out what is probably worth thousands of dollars, and worth infinitlely more to you and she doesn’t care you fucking SNAP. My dad reset my router accidentally, risking ALOT of data in the process, and he got angry with me for cursing and kicking a box of my own stuff. That data meant nothing to him, but represented hours of work and setup to me.

First of all we’ve all done jobs we’d rather not have. But if you want to survive you need money, and the only way to get money is through theft or work. Most of us prefer work even if the job sucks. And if the only thing you have in life that makes you happy are toys, Hell any object, you’re life is terrible and you should work on fixing it (In other words go out and meet people.). Snapping at your father because he accidentally (we all make mistakes) unplugged your router is rather dumb. No data in transit is irreplaceable. If you are copying a file it still exists on the source machine, if you are downloading something you can always restart the download. If it was a very large download that you’ve been working on for hours or days you should have used a method that can recover from such errors such as BitTorrent. Finally if your mother is your “significant vagina” you need therapy.

The point of this rant is unless your life is in danger via the person taking an inanimate object from you (An armed robber for instance who may just kill you after taking your object anyways) there is no justification for putting another person’s life in jeopardy. If somebody throws up something of importance to you feel free to scream, yell, or even take them to court (I don’t see any reason I could possible take a family member to court over property myself.) but never ever attempt to bring harm to their person. Should I be away from my home and somebody breaks in and steals my stuff I’m not going to bring bodily harm to them if I find them afterwards, I’m calling the police and seeing them in court. A person’s life is more valuable than your stuff, period. It’s sickening to me that some people think otherwise.

As a cultural awareness note I didn’t belittle the kid for living with his mother. In many other countries, especially asian countries, it’s common for elderly parents to move in with their kids when they are no longer capable of being independent. I haven’t a clue if that is the case here so I’m not touching that subject.

Multi-Layer Security

Bruce Schneier has an excellent essay posted on his blog. It deals with a security mechanism we are all familiar with, physical locks. It’s no secret physical locks can be bypassed via lock picks, bump keys, and random everyday objects. Few people realize though how insecure the lock on their front door is. On top of that most physical locks require a key, which many people find inconvenient.

Lock companies have been trying to solve both of these problems through more secure locking mechanisms and keyless entry methods. Of course as with any security related items these new methods are introducing new ways of exploiting physical locks. I don’t think there will ever be a secure lock, there will always be methods of bypass. But locks are important because they add another layer of security.

Having one layer of security is never a good idea since an exploit in that layer will leave everything behind it vulnerable. Case in point if somebody picks your lock they are through the front door. If you have no other security layer everything in your home is fair game. Now let’s add a large guard dog to the mix. Once the criminal bypasses the lock they will have to deal with the dog. This can be accomplished by simply killing the thing but if you are in the house and you hear the dog bark that gives you a few seconds to prepare. That would imply a third layer, you. Hopefully that third layer has a gun to add another layer between you and the criminal.

Security can only be properly done in layers, and each layer should complement another. No layer should be exploitable via another layer. In other words using our example bypassing the front door lock won’t affect the dog. Bypassing the dog won’t affect you and your gun. Meanwhile as mentioned in the link Schlage are introducing Internet enabled locks. This ties your physical security to the security of your computer. Should somebody exploit your security layers on your computer they also exploit one layer of your physical security. This should never be the case.

When planning a home defense strategy make sure you have multiple layers. Even seemingly unimportant things will require time on the criminal’s behalf. The more time the criminal wastes the more time you have to properly respond and prepare. Sure having two locks on your font door (always ensure one is a good dead bolt) may seem like a meaningless idea since it only prolongs the criminal’s entry it does prolong it. Those few additional seconds could buy you enough time to round your family up in a secure room with only one entrance that can be covered with a shotgun.

Blaming “Assault Weapons” for Pittsburgh Shooting Took Longer then I Expected

Well it has begun, the blaming of “assault weapons” for the gym shooting in Pittsburgh. Via Says Uncle I came across this story. Apparently after throwing in a bid for Delaware senator Joseph Sestak is howling for a reinstatement of the “assault weapons” ban. From his mouth to our ears:

“As we continue to see the effects of the violence in our state and nation, we must enact legislation banning assault weapons with the necessary sense of urgency,” said Sestak. “The senseless shootings of so many innocent victims during an aerobics class in Allegheny County, and of the three police officers in Pittsburgh this past April, are heartbreaking reminders that we must immediately address the loss of the common-sense ban earlier this decade.”

Notice anything strange here? Maybe this part of the article will sum it up:

n a release Thursday, Sestak pointed to an Aug. 4 shooting in Allegheny County, where George Sodini, 48, of Scott Township, used two 9 mm semi-automatics and a .45-caliber revolver to kill three women and wound nine others in an aerobics class before taking his own life.

Hmm, something isn’t quite right here. I’m not quite sure what it is though. Oh yeah that’s it! None of those listed guns fall under the “assault weapons” category. So let me get this straight Mr. Sestak wants to become a United States senator and he’s starting his campaign with lies almost immediately. Most people trying to get an office at least pretend to tell the truth right away.

Likewise his idea to solve a problem is to completely ignore the problem and enact a totally unrelated law. Wow I can picture him on the senate floor demanding we enact a law that would stop or allow abortions in order to fight illegal immigration. With logic like that who needs enemies to fuck up the country?

Trust No One, Especially if They Produce Your Cell Phone

It’s no secret I’m a geek. I work at a technology company, pay attention to technology news, get excited over new releases of Mac OS, Linux, and Windows and I have a smart phone. My smart phone is an old Palm Treo 755p running Palm OS (I still refuse to call it Garnet OS). By today’s standards, and even by the standards of the day I purchased it, it’s an outdated phone.

I’ve been looking at new phones but haven’t found one that suites me. The iPhone would be nice if it wasn’t on AT&T, and didn’t have draconian policies in place for it’s App Store. Android would be nice but it’s on T-Mobile which doesn’t get coverage in may places I travel to. Then there is the Palm Pre which I’ve had a slight love affair with due to the fact it’s from Palm and it’s on Sprint (I’m out of contract so I’m in no hurry to get into a contract with another carrier). I’ve been waiting for Palm to open the flood gates and allow third party applications to be installed on the Pre without using the special developer mode. Well I think the Pre may be off of my list.

Apparently the Palm Pre periodically reports you GPS coordinates back to Palm. I know what you’re thinking, since the cell phone providers can triangulate your position from your cell phone what does it matter if GPS coordinates are being transmitted? Well triangulating my position via my phone is simply a side effect of the technology and can be done with any radio based device. Also Palm is receiving these coordinates, and frankly they have no business having them. They have no need to know where I am when using their product, and they never mention that they are doing this. It’s slight of hand acts like this that really piss me off.

The link does have instructions on disabling this problem but it’s unknown if these changes will hold after a software update. But this is a good lesson on why you should trust no one with your security. This goes doubly so for closed source software vendors where you can’t know for certain that they aren’t doing something malicious under the hood. This goes triple for a company that produces a product that you carry around with you everywhere that has the ability to track you. Paranoia when it comes to personal security is a good thing.

Further Research

Palm’s terms and conditions that legally allow them to get away with this. (PDF)

Senator Wicker Introduces Bill to End Gun Restriction on Train Travel

Another pro-second amendment bill is being introduced, this time by Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi. The Bill, titled the Amtrak Secure Transportation of Firearms Act, would require Amtrak to enact regulations akin to those held by airlines for transportation of firearms.

As it stands right now Amtrak has a zero gun policy. Unlike the airlines that have regulations in place that allow you to transport you gun, Amtrak won’t even allow you to bring a gun that is unloaded and locked in a secure case. From the article:

The legislation states that if an Amtrak station accepts luggage for a specific route, passengers would be able to lawfully transport firearms and ammunition in secure baggage based on the following guidelines:

· Before checking the bag or boarding the train, the passenger must declare that the firearm or pistol is in his or her bag and is unloaded

· The firearm or pistol must be carried in a hard-sided container

· The hard-sided container must be locked and only the passenger has the combination or key for the container

Of course this won’t allow you to carry a gun even if your legally capable but it’s far better then the anti-gun zero ability policy currently in place. Apparently a similar amendment to a budge resolution was made earlier this year but was removed by the House.