Month: April 2010

On The FCC Vs. Comcast Case

A while back the FCC brought down the hammer on Comcast telling the not-loved-by-anybody company they could not throttler or filter traffic. Well the courts decided that the FCC didn’t have that authority so Comcast is free to go back to their games again. This has been a major topic of discussion with geeks as of late because it pretty much rips the teeth right out of the idea of net neutrality. Or does it?

The Internet is an interesting creature. It’s predecessor was created during the Cold War as a mechanism to ensure the country didn’t have a single vulnerable point in it’s military communications network. The idea was to create a decentralized system that couldn’t be taken down by one or a handful of nuclear strikes, thus allow us to coordinate a counter-attack. Eventually this research lead to the public Internet that you’re using right now.

From the get go the government has been involved in the Internet. Likewise most of the major ISPs are companies that evolved from the breakup of Ma Bell which was a government sanctioned monopoly over all telecommunications in the country. Needless to say the entire system is infected with government interference. Until a short while ago the rules dictated to the ISPs was they had to allow all traffic to flow across their network without prejudice. This mean they could not throttle traffic crossing their lines that was emitted by or destined to another ISP. These ISPs also couldn’t throttle or filter traffic in any way. Now that this is no longer the case people have been clamoring for the government to enforce net neutrality again.

A lot of people are stating how scary it is to think about these companies have the power to filter traffic and how the only solution available to us is for the government to make laws that prevent this. You know what I find scarier? The government have more control over the Internet. Why? No current representative that I’m aware of has a background in technology, specifically networking. Likewise the government always managed to find the least qualified people to head committees and regulatory groups. Remember, “The Internet is a series of tubes” Ted Stevens from Alaska? Guess what. He was in charge of Internet regulation.

Do we really want people like this making laws that will regulate the Internet? I don’t. But I’m also a fan of net neutrality so what could possibly be done to ensure the Internet stays neutral while the government stays out of it? There are actually several options available.

In order to setup an ISP you need two items controlled by private entities. The first is a block of IP addresses while the second item is one or more domain names. Both of these are controlled by a private company called the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). A potential option available would be for ICANN to require ISPs to agree to a series of rules that would in essence be net neutrality. If the ISPs won’t sign the agreement ICANN simply won’t allocate IP addresses or domain names. Simple. If an ISP really doesn’t want to play by these rules they can create their own Internet (you can create multiple global networks separated from one another thus having multiple Internets) and of course nobody will use them.

I’m not suggesting this saying it’s the right solution. This suggestion is being made as a potential mechanism of enforcing net neutrality while also keeping morons government out of the equation. But the idea of putting an entity who put Ted Stevens in a situation to made any regulations on the Internet is frightening.

On The Collateral Murder Video

I’m sure everybody has seen the video of the Apache helicopter crew shooting a group of civilians and two reporters. I wasn’t there so I’m no going to comment on the even itself, I’ll leave that to people who want to argue about that. But an interesting point is brought up by Bruce Schneier. The following was stated on the WikiLeak Twitter stream:

Finally cracked the encryption to US military video in which journalists, among others, are shot. Thanks to all who donated $/CPUs.

Bruce’s question is simple:

Surely this isn’t NSA-level encryption. But what is it?

So WikiLeaks is saying the Collateral Murder video was encrypted upon receipt. They rented “super computer time” to break the video encryption. So what the Hell scheme was used to break the encryption? Although Wikipedia is far from a valid source of information I’m going to link to the article on AES encryption because it gives a good overview. Specifically this part:

The National Security Agency (NSA) reviewed all the AES finalists, including Rijndael, and stated that all of them were secure enough for US Government non-classified data. In June 2003, the US Government announced that AES may be used to protect classified information:

The design and strength of all key lengths of the AES algorithm (i.e., 128, 192 and 256) are sufficient to protect classified information up to the SECRET level. TOP SECRET information will require use of either the 192 or 256 key lengths. The implementation of AES in products intended to protect national security systems and/or information must be reviewed and certified by NSA prior to their acquisition and use.”[8]

So considering this video was classified it would most likely have been encrypted using AES. There are some attacks currently available against AES but none of them allow breaking in a reasonable amount of time (depending on the implementation of AES used of course). Of course there is the possibility that the video was encrypted using a poorly chosen key and the WikiLeaks people simply performed a brute force attack against the video. It would seem idiotic that somebody would both encrypting this video using a strong encryption algorithm but not both using a good key. Then again this is the government we’re talking about and they are known for incompetence.

I would like to hear from WikiLeaks what method was used to encrypted this video. It would be interesting to find out not only what algorithm was used but also if the video was encrypted by the military, other government personnel, or the person who leaked the video.

The iPad

Being a world renounced technology pundit… wait scratch that. Being a geek I get asked about various technological doodads and gizmos quite often. Since the iPad is the current hot tech device I’m getting asked my views on it. Because of my inflated ego and perceived self worth I’ve decided reads of this site (both of you) may be interested in my views on the device. So here it is.

First let me start by saying I don’t have an iPhone or iPod Touch. Coincidentally I also don’t have an iPad therefore this post is going to be my views based upon the published specifications and my person beliefs as a computer scientist (note that’s the only credential I’m going to be using because I have no other credentials related to this). I do have the development tools for the iPhone installed on my computer and have written test applications for the platform and most of the time I view a platform based on my development experiences. I have played with physical iPhones but have yet to hold an iPad. There that’s straight up and honest. My opinions may change based on exposure to the physical device at a later date and if that is the case I’ll post my revised ides.

A final note is I’m basing this post on the iPad in its stock configuration. I realize that is has already been jail broken and thus additional functionality exists. I don’t like messing with such things and if I need to jail break a device to make it useful to me I generally just get a different device.

First and foremost I’m going to mention my gripes with the iPhone (the validity of which will be made clear in a few paragraphs). The biggest one for me is third party applications can’t multi-task. If you don’t know what that means it is a pseudo-fancy way of saying multiple third party applications can not run at the same time. So if you have an IRC client you can not allow it to run in the background while you open the Pandora application meaning you’ll miss any messages sent to you during your time outside of the application. This is a huge issue for my uses. I often have an AIM client (don’t laugh, it’s what the majority of my friends use), IRC client, and various other programs open and running at the same time on my laptop. Likewise on my phone I have ran my AIM client while doing other tasks (yes the old Palm OS had some limited multi-tasking capabilities including network connections continuing to run in the background). Not being able to get messages sent to me using these clients while I’m doing other things is a huge strike against the device.

Another issue I have with the iPhone is the fact you can only install applications Apple has blessed. Their process of blessing applications is fairly random and they haven’t published exact specifications stating what will and will not get approved. They have mentioned some things but other things they seem to make up on the spot. I don’t like a third party having this kind of control over a device I have purchased. If I want to install a shitty application that will break my phone I should damn well be able to do so.

Third the battery in the iPhone is not easily user replaceable. Yes Apple will replace the battery should it become weak at a nominal charge but that doesn’t do anything for me when the battery runs out of juice while I’m on a trip and I need to swap in a fresh one. I have a spare batter for my current phone specifically because of this scenario. I want the ability to swap batteries when the one in my phone is completely discharged after a long phone conversation. Likewise I’m a big fan of self-servicing my electronics. My the fan in my old laptop died I bought a new one and installed it myself. I could do this because the case could be opened easily while the iPhone isn’t built in a manner that allows easy service. It’s a disposable device, when it breaks you’re just expected to replace it. I hate this idea.

I also hate AT&T which is the only United States carrier who has the iPhone. This is a non-issue for the iPad so it’s irrelevant to this post though.

Those are the big ones. Beyond that I haven’t much against the iPhone. But that brings up the first issue I have with the iPad. It doesn’t correct any of these issues I have with the iPhone. The iPad doesn’t multi-task and any application you want to install must be blessed by Apple. Also like the iPhone the iPad battery is not user replaceable which just pisses me off.

With that said the iPad does have one option available to it that I like. You can sync up a Bluetooth keyboard to the iPad giving you the ability to do actual typing on it. Combined with the size and portability of this device that means the iPad should be fairly proficient for writing tasks. This means you could theoretically bring an iPad in place of a laptop if you needed to write reports or blog posts. Of course the iPad lacks many tools (virtual machines and development tools mostly) I require for day to day tasks and hence would not be a laptop replacement for me. But that’s my uses and I don’t think most people require the same tools I do therefore the iPad is a potential laptop replacement. Most people outside of the computer science field I know would be able to function a week on the features available on the iPad.

Now the part I really like about the iPad, it’s simplistic interface. Once again this isn’t something for me personally but for people I know. The iPad would be the perfect computer for my grandmother. My grandmother knows nothing about computers. While trying to show her how to run one I noticed several things. First she always tries to touch the icons on a screen to open an application. She doesn’t get the interaction between the touch pad on a laptop and the pointer on a screen. A touch screen device would be perfect for her which is exactly what the iPad is. She doesn’t touch type, instead she has to hunt and peck for keys on a keyboard. Due to this she really gains no benefit from a physical keyboard since the main benefit is speed. An onscreen keyboard would be ideal for her uses (especially if you could sort the keys in alphabetical order instead of using the QWERTY layout). By default the iPad has a web browser which is pretty much all she needs or wants. She has no interest in third party applications at all. Of course a JooJoo would fit this use case well except for the fact it’s larger and heavier while my grandmother doesn’t have the best ability to hold a heavier device up for very long.

Overall I think the iPad is perfect for those wanting to use basic Internet functionality (web browsing, e-mail, etc.) but have no experience nor interest in computers beyond that. It’s simple and basic which is exactly what many people want.

As an e-reader I think the iPad suffers from the same flaws as any portable computer, the screen. The reason I love my Kindle is because the screen is something I can look at for hours on end and use outside in direct sunlight. Yes when the weather is nice I like to take my reading outside to places like my little deck or park benches. The iPad screen is highly reflective. Apple did that because it makes colors look much richer but it also comes at the price of being almost unusable outdoors. My laptop has a glossy screen as well and using it with any light source behind you can suck pretty hard. Finally the iPad is a bit on the large side for an e-reader in my opinion (I love the Kindle’s size, especially when I’m sitting on an airplane). Without an e-paper display I can’t imagine replacing my Kindle with an iPad. Of course somebody will bring up that I can’t view color illustrations on my Kindle to which my replay is, I don’t care. Truth be told through most of college I obtained international editions of my required text books. These are the same books you buy in campus book stores except they are not hard cover and they only have black and white illustrations. I never encountered an image or diagram in a book where I though, “Hey I wish this was in color.” And most of my reading involves novels and technical manuals which are mostly text and therefore don’t require color. If your main reading material are things like comic books I can see where having a device with a color screen is going to be a huge plus and in that case the iPad will fit the bill.

The iPad seems to also be a great portable movie player. The screen is large enough where you could watch a movie on it while still being small enough to have sitting out on an airplane or bus. If the screen is anything like the iPhone’s it’ll be plenty good for displaying good video. I think it’s too large to be an effective portable music player though. But most cell phones have this functionality built in. Having the larger screen the iPad offers is no benefit for playing music so most people will probably continue doing that on their phones (or MP3 player as in my case).

Overall I think the iPad is a great device for many use cases. None of them happen to be my use cases and therefore it doesn’t really fit me. The price seems to be in line with other similar devices although with how much more expensive it is than many netbooks in addition to have less features I’d say it’s not a good price point. For the most part my feeling towards the iPad is that it’s a solution in search of a problem. It’s too large to be as portable as a phone but tool limited to be a laptop replacement for many people.

What’s Mine is Mine and What’s Yours is Mine

Jay over at MArooned has a post showing some people don’t understand the concept of private property. Here’s the jist of the story:

A group of homeless people and housing activists took over a privately owned Mission District duplex on Sunday in what served as the climax of a protest designed to promote use of San Francisco’s vacant buildings as shelters for the needy.

OK so we have a bunch of people who decided they could just take over a home for a while and protest. The police stood by and did nothing but watch and eventually left without making any arrests. But some of the things aid by those homeless individuals made me realize something. People respect the concept of private property until they don’t have property:

Because of housing speculation during the real estate boom, “a lot of tenants were evicted,” Gullicksen said. “Now a lot of those homes are sitting empty. The city should be doing something to turn vacant buildings into affordable housing.”

They may be vacant but they aren’t owned by the city you putz. But of course Mr. Give-Me-Your-Money has a solution to the city not owning the property:

Specifically, he said the city should foreclose on buildings where hefty back taxes are owed or use its powers of eminent domain to turn over long-vacant homes to nonprofit developers. The group is not advocating turning over the city’s stock of new but unsold properties to the homeless.

So the city can either steal the house by collecting on taxes that shouldn’t exist (I’m sorry but property tax isn’t a legitimate tax in my book it’s just a mechanism to ensure you don’t actually own your property) or use their power of eminent domain to outright steal the house. Now eminent domain has always troubled me since it allows somebody to steal another person’s property so long as the one doing the stealing has the government on their side. Like property tax, eminent domain is a mechanism that prevents individuals from actually owning property since ownership implies it can’t be taken without the theft being labeled a crime giving the owner recourse. Needless to say anybody who makes a suggestion based on leveraging property taxes or using eminent domain pisses me right the fuck off. Oh and I love this part:

Jose Morales, 80, lived in the San Jose Street building for 43 years before he was forced to leave in 2008 through the Ellis Act, which allows property owners to get out of the rental business.

Morales said he now lives in a small space in an office building in the Mission District.

“The city should have protected me,” he said. “It’s like they don’t see me. It’s like I’m a ghost to them.”

Guess what buddy you just learned something, you need to take your own protection into your own hands. My question is this, you rented this home for 43 years right? Why the Hell can’t you just go rent SOMEWHERE ELSE? I know what a concept huh?

In this case the city shouldn’t have protected your whiny ass. The individual who owned the house decided he no longer wanted to rent it out. Tough shit buddy. What an individual does with his own property is his business alone. Thankfully the property owner’s attorney understands the concepts I’m talking about:

Zacks said he hopes charges are filed over what he characterized as “people taking the law into their own hands and breaking into property.”

“It’s sort of ridiculous to think that a private property owner like Mr. Tehlirian would have any obligation to house the homeless,” he said. “It’s a problem we should deal with as a community, not something that should be foisted on the back of a small property owner.”

Exactly a person who owns a house should not be required to let somebody else live there. If you want to set up a charity home and let homeless people live there you have that right. But nobody should be demanding a government entity force a homeowner to house the homeless. If you want the government to steal shit from those who can afford it and give it to you who can not afford it move to a communist nation. What is being demanded is redistribution of wealth which is exactly what Karl Marx was all about.

Apparently The UN Believes It’s The ATF

Snowflakes in Hell brings a story that is rather interesting. Yesterday the National Shooting Sports Foundation posted a news item brining to light that the United Nations is filing firearm trace requests. They posted a trace request originating from the United Nations [Be forewarned it’s a PDF document].

This is troubling because of two facts. First of all the United Nations is all for disarming civilian populations. That shouldn’t be a surprise when you stop to realize the United Nations is composed of multiple world governments, most of which either severely restrict or outright ban civilians from owning firearms. Second the United Nations apparently believe they have the same authority in this country as the ATF.

The trace request is for a H&K P7 that the French apparently found (more likely surrendered). What’s funny is the request states the company should cooperate due to a United Nations resolution. These resolutions are binding to signing government bodies not the civilian population. That means if the United Nations wants a trace performed they need to go to our federal government not the private company that manufactures the pistol. I hope H&K decides the UN sucks and that H&K hates them. The United Nations is the last organization we want to give an inch to because they’ll take at least a light year.

Need a Good Artist

I have one. This post is falling directly under the, “it’s my site and I can do whatever the Hell I want with it” category. Anyways I’m throwing up some free advertising for my sister, Rebecca, who happens to be in the art field and therefore starving. She’s an artist for hire who does good work (don’t tell her I said that, it’ll go to her head) and has an online portfolio located and this oddly named web site.

She’s pretty multi-talented and does everything from comic art to web design and implementation. So go check her stuff out. Also here’s her resume (in PDF format).

I’d throw up my standard required by law FCC disclaimer but I already disclosed she’s my sister and therefore you should know this post is pretty biased.

I Think I Can Answer This

A difficult question has been put forth in regards to Apple’s recently released iPad (you may have heard about it):

Doing a little coding, we’ve discovered that iPad apps only have access to 256MB of RAM and the processor thinks it is a single core (probably ARM Cortex A8) processor.
…
So how does Apple get applications to run so fast? Thanks Thomas!

Considering the device can only run one third party application at a time I’d say you have your answer. If developers have gotten so bad that they can’t get their small application aimed at mobile devices to run on an single core processor with 256MB or RAM then they have failed as a developer. Seriously my old Palm PDA opened and ran applications instantly and it has a paltry 16 Mhz processor and 512KB of RAM which was split between storage and application use.

Night Sights on the Way

Yeah I’m kind of slow but I’ve finally ordered a set of night sights for my carry gun. This is probably the first thing people usually do with a carry gun but I’ve waited for quite some time because I couldn’t figured out what sights I wanted to use. I’m a picky person and also one who has trouble committing to a plan of action until I’ve gained as much data as possible. I’m also incredibly picky but I think the wait was worthwhile since I finally found a set that I believe has all the features I want. When it comes to night sights there are plenty to chose from. This post is going to be a list of my findings on different sights I looked into.

First some criteria that I set forth. I was looking for sights for my standard carry gun, a Glock 30SF. It’s a sub-compact (by Glock’s definition not everybody else) pistol that shoots my favorite round, the .45 auto (I like big fat slow moving rounds that have a trajectory closer to that of a grenade than a real bullet). Obviously being night sights whatever I found had to glow in the dark which pretty much meant tritium lamps were a must.

Although not required I preferred having the front sight to be green and the rear sights to be another color. This aids in quickly finding and focusing on the front sight as green is the color the human eye is most sensitive to and in a self defense shooting the front sight is usually what you need. After some digging I found out that green and yellow tritium lamps will keep glowing for roughly the same amount of time (tritium gas will eventually stop glowing meaning the sights will need to be replaced) while other colors tritium lamps (think orange and red) will stop glowing sooner. That meant I wanted a combination of green front and yellow rear if possible.

Then we have the issue of sight radius. The Glock 30SF is like a short air craft carrier. It’s wide, flat, and doesn’t give a lot of room for jets to stop on when landing. This means the sight radius of the gun isn’t great (in fact it’s crap). Every millimeter helps when it comes to additional sight radius so another options criteria were rear sights that extended all the way to the back of the slide (as opposed to being flush with the rear of the dovetail the sight sits in like the factory Glock sights are). Like the color selection this criteria wasn’t a deal breaker just a preferred option.

The final requirement I had was quality construction. The last thing I wanted to happen was something to impact my firearm, crack the tritium vial, and allow the glowing gas to leak out leaving me with not-night sights. Almost all major night sight manufacturers make pretty sturdy bad guy finders so this was the easiest of the criteria for me to meet.

Before I begin I’m dropping a disclaimer. Obviously I didn’t research into every night sight system out there, I only looked at well known ones. The reason for this isn’t anything nefarious, those are just the sights I could find the most data on. I also didn’t have physical access to most of these sights therefore I was mostly going off of data and reviews. It would be quite impossible for me to hunt down and try every sight I mentioned and I can’t afford to buy a set of each and try them. Hence much of what I state could be wrong. Likewise all the stuff I mention are things important to me. You may not agree with anything stated here and that’s fine, I didn’t do this research for you. There you have it people so without further babbling let’s briefly talk about the sights I looked at.

The first sights I looked into were XS Big Dot sights. I heard about these via the Handgun Podcast and thought the idea was quite good. What’s the idea? Simple you have a large dot front sight and a rear sight with a vertical line. You “dot the i” and pull the trigger. It’s supposed to be a very fast mechanism for target acquisition which I liked. After reading various reviews I found a lot of people liked them but there seemed to be two issues regularly reported. The first was the size of the front sight created problems with some holsters. Apparently the front sight could get snagged on some holsters during draw and simply did not fit in other holsters. The second issue reported was the sights aren’t good for any kind of distance shooting because elevation judgment with the XS Big Dot sights isn’t very easy. That’s not really an issue for a self defense gun but I wanted a set of sights that was as versatile as possible.

The next set of glow in the dark bad guy finders I looked into were Heinie Straight Eight sights. These signs are similar to the XS Big Dot sights in that you align the front sight with a glowing dot in the rear sight in essence “dotting the i” (except in this case you’re making an ‘8’ not an ‘i’). They are similar to the stock sights found on a Beretta M9 which I’ve heard a few people refer to as snowman sights. This type of sight is supposed to be faster to line up than three-dot sights since you only have two dots to worry about. I’m not so sure about that since two of the dots on a three-dot sight are horizontally fixed to one another and you really only have to concern yourself with getting the front sight between the two rear dots. Either way beyond having only two dots the Heinie Straight Eights are constructed like most three dot sights meaning you have a notch rear sight and a blade front sight. I did like the fact that these sights extended to the rear of the slide giving a bit more sight radius than the XS Big Dots.

Of course my journey didn’t stop there. The next sights I looked at were Trijicon Night Sights. There were several things I liked about these sights. First they offer more protection by brining you closer to God. Sorry I couldn’t pass that up when talking about Trijicon. The main things that caught my eye with the Trijicon sights were how bright they were reported to be and how clear the dots were. Trijicon makes their sights by putting a tritium vial inside of a steel sight housing and then slapping a sapphire lens over the vial and painting a white circle around the lens to aid in daytime shooting. The sapphire lens supposedly focuses the light from the tritium vial so you see clear circles instead of slightly blurry dots. Trijicon also offers different colored rear sights which I found as a plus. Unfortunately they don’t make a sight that extends to the back of the slide (that I found at least) meaning you get roughly the same sight radius as factory Glock sights. As I mentioned this wasn’t a deal breaker by any means but it would be nice. They other thing I didn’t like about the Trijicon sights was the white circle around the tritium tube was painted on. Theoretically that means the circle could come off if you used certain solvents when cleaning your gun. In practice I didn’t find a single instance of that happening to somebody and if it does Trijicon will repaint the sights for free. It’s really a non-issue and is mostly psychological for me.

The fourth type of sights I looked into were Meprolights. These sights hail from Israel which is a country known for making good guns and accessories (they know warfare). Like the Trijicon sights Meprolight sights are three dot style and otherwise similar. Meprolights offer different color rear sights as well which is another plus. What they offer over Trijicon sights is the white circle surrounding the tritium vial is actually an inserted sleeve which means it can’t be washed off by solvents. That’s a nice plus in my mind. Most reviews I read also say that Meprolights are slightly brighter than Trijicon’s offerings. Where they fall short in comparison is in the lens department. Meprolights don’t use sapphire lens meaning they dots aren’t as sharp in the dark. Instead of nice crystal clear circles you see slightly blurry dots. Not a big issue in my book. I also read a couple reports stating that the Meprolight lenses are curved inwards meaning if your shooting during the day and have a very bright source of light behind you (like the sun) it can reflect rather harshly off of the sights.

The final sights I looked at, and ultimately settled on, were Ameriglo Pro night sights. The Pro night sights are they standard three dot sights with white circles surrounding the tritium vials. I decided to stay away from their aperture style rear sight because it’s bigger and isn’t legal in GSSF matches (as I said I like versatility). The sights are actually made by Ameriglo but contained Trijicon tritium vials in them (from what I research there are only a handful of companies that actually make tritium vials for night sights). The main difference I found was Ameriglo places the vials in white sleeves like Meproslights meaning the white circles surrounding the tritium vials isn’t painted on. I like that. Likewise they use Trijicon’s sapphire lenses meaning the dots should appear more crisp when using them in the dark. The Pro sights also extend all the way to the rear of the slide giving a slightly longer sight radius which I also like. Finally they offer yellow rear sights which are the set I ordered. Overall the Ameriglo sights seemed to have all the benefits of the Trijicon sights while correcting the only two issues (construction of the white circle around the tritium vials and the sight radius) I found with the Trijicon sights. Finally to seal the deal I found a coupon code for 25% off of my order when buying directly from Ameriglo (I won’t post the coupon code here simply because I’m not sure if it’s supposed to be for GSSF members only or not but if it is I respect that desire).

I received notification that the sights shipped out today so after I get them installed and tested I’ll write a review on what I think.

But since their post is about night sights in general I’m going to post a couple other tips involving installation. First make sure you have the correct tools to install aftermarket sights for your gun. In the case of Glock pistols you need a next nut driver (which is supposed to be included with the Ameriglo sights) to remove the factory Glock front sight (unlike in the past modern Glock front slights all appear to be screwed on instead of staked on) and install the Ameriglo front sight. A good tip I found is to get some Loctite threat locker (that’s the blue stuff, don’t accidentally get the liquid weld) and apply that to the front sight screw. This will ensure the screw doesn’t come loose during regular shooting but won’t be on so tight that you can’t remove it should the need arise.

For the rear sight you can either take off the old one with a punch. This isn’t recommended if you want to keep the factory rear sight as Glock’s factory sights are made of plastic and will mar and deform under the pressure of a punch. Likewise it’s not recommended to install a new rear sight with a punch as you can easily fuck up the new sight (hammers on a tritium night sight can crack the glass making up the vial causing the tritium to leak out and leaving you with a not-night sight), the slide, or both. Since I got 25% off of my entire order I also nabbed a rear sight tool for Glock pistols from Ameriglo. These are supposed to make rear sight removal and installation easier and since I own a number of Glocks I’ll probably be doing this operation in the future.

Finally sometimes rear dovetail sights won’t fit into the dovetail on the slide properly. This can be corrected with a little filing (of the rear sight, not the slide). So it’s smart to have a small metal file on hand and the patience to use one.

Anyways more to come after I get the sights installed and tested.

Kind of Scary When You Think About It

According to the Department of Defense:

According to a Department of Defense report, there have been at least 32 “accidents involving nuclear weapons.” And the report only counts US accidents which occurred before 1980.

What kind of accidents you ask? Well:

They include such gaffes as nuclear bombs inadvertently falling through bomb bay doors; the accidental firing of a retrorocket on an ICBM; the vast dispersal of radioactive debris; and the loss of enriched fissile material and nuclear bombs (which are “still out there somewhere”).

I’m sure after each of these accidents the only words uttered were, “Oops.” Read the entire report here (It’s a PDF document so be warned).