Month: April 2011

Monday Metal: Die Dead Enough by Megadeth

Between his crying and whining about the evils Metallica befell upon him we often forget that Dave Mustaine can make some amazing music. This ability has lead to recognition as a great guitarist and earned respect for him and his band Megadeth. This week’s Monday Metal is one of my favorite Megadeth songs, Die Dead Enough:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DA6jDS1ygk]

Fooled you! You can’t actually watch the video here because EMI thinks only dirty scumbag pirates would dare watch an embedded video. What kind of crazy right do I think I have by posting publicly available content on my site anyways? The song really is wroth the additional click to watch on YouTube though so get going, I’ll be here when you’re done.

Brazilian School Shooting

12 children are dead after a crazed fuckwit went through a Brazilian school. Of course like most of these lunatics this pussy offed himself as soon as opposition showed up. This demonstrates two other reasons I’m such a proponent of carry laws and against so-called gun-free zones; these shootings always happen in gun free zones and the shooter almost always offs himself the second he meets any form of resistance. If school faculty were allowed to carry while at work they could present this resistance sooner than the police could arrive which would likely cause the shooter to off himself earlier on thus potentially saving lives.

I’m sure this event will be used by the anti-gunners in Brazil to further restrict what can and can’t be owned by the mere serfs but after looking up Brazil’s gun laws I have to say they’re not as bad as expected but certainly are restrictive.

All firearms must be registered, a person must be 25 years-old before purchasing a firearm, and in order to keep a firearm you must pay a registration tax every three years. I’ll also mentioned the scumbag shooter broke Brazilian law as it is apparently almost impossible to get a carry permit there. I also found it interesting that there was a referendum in 2005 to ban all civilian firearm and ammunition sales in Brazil. It failed but the following got my attention:

The ban also had the backing of the federal government (which wanted a government monopoly on gun possession), the Roman Catholic Church, and Rede Globo. The anti-gun lobby received vast support and free coverage from the press.

It would seem that the Brazilian government is in favor of disarming the serfs and was willing to give anti-gunners free coverage in order to accomplish it’s goal of disarming the public. I’m not at all shocked by this though.

Another thing that is interesting about this story are the weapons chosen by the scumbag shooter:

At least 12 others were wounded when the man entered the school with two revolvers and began shooting.

It would seem a ban on standard capacity magazines wouldn’t have done jack shit here. I’m not at all surprised.

Doom Played on E-Ink

Doom is the game that has been ported to everything on the planet and some things not on this planet. Well it seems there was no port of Doom on an E-Ink based device but thankfully that has changed. Yeah it plays kind of crappy but it’s still pretty cool considering how slow of refresh rates most E-Ink displays still have. Here’s a video of the game in action:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOPZrVsCEHg]

White House Attempting to Bar Communications Privacy Act Reform

For those of you who believe the government requires a warrant in order to obtain your e-mails from an ISP’s server you would be partially correct. As the law sits now any e-mail left on a server for more than six months is considered abandoned and thus can be obtained without the hassle of a search warrant. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has been trying to change this law for a while now but the current critters in the White House are urging Congress to prevent such measures from being adopted. James A. Baker, the associated deputy attorney general, stated the following in relation to the subject:

Congress should recognize the collateral consequences to criminal law enforcement and the national security of the United States if ECPA were to provide only one means — a probable cause warrant — for compelling disclosure of all stored content. For example, in order to obtain a search warrant for a particular e-mail account, law enforcement has to establish probable cause to believe that evidence will be found in that particular account. In some cases, this link can be hard to establish. In one recent case, for example, law enforcement officers knew that a child exploitation subject had used one account to send and receive child pornography, and officers discovered that he had another email account, but they lacked evidence about his use of the second account.

First let’s hand Mr. Baker bonus points for using child pornography since we know anything to “protect the children” is good. Second don’t we see having to provide evidence in order to obtain a warrant just gets in the way? Hell we should all support legislation that would allow the government to just walk into our homes whenever the fuck they want. Not supporting such legislation simply means you have something to hide and thus are likely a terrorist.

I also love how law enforcement officers know a target was sending and receiving child pornography via one e-mail account but were upset that they couldn’t access the other e-mail account which they had no evidence against. Guess what? That’s what we call due process and at one time was believed to be the basis of our legal system.

This is probably the best reason to have your own mail server. If you own the mail server it doesn’t matter how old any e-mail stored on the system is as the government requires one of those pesky warrants in order to sieze it.

Government Shutdown and NICS

With the looming government shutdown one interesting question that has been going around the gun community is whether or not the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) will be operational. This is an interesting question to which no answer appears to be in sight. Personally I doubt the NICS systems will be offline as even in a government shutdown law enforcement agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) will continue running (and our soldiers will be expected to continue working even though they won’t be receiving paychecks, how’s that for a stab in the back).

With that said part of me would almost welcome a shutdown of NICS. Why? Because it would open the door for questioning whether or not NICS is at all constitutional. There are two possibilities that could occur if NICS were to shut down; gun stores would be unable to sell firearms or all firearms sales would go through after three days (if NICS doesn’t get back to a dealer in three days the owner can treat it as an automatic approval). In the first case having a non-operational NICS system would effectively bar people their right to keep and bear arms by effectively creating a blanket gun ban for the time of government shutdown. In the second case ineligible people may acquire firearms placing the question as to whether or not the NICS system is worth anything on the table.

I could see grounds for a lawsuit if the NICS system was shutdown preventing somebody who needed a firearm to self-defense from obtaining it.

More Bad News for California Gun Owners

Bad news denizens of the People’s Republic of Kalifornistan, three bad news for guns bills are coming up for a hearing. These seem really stupid and absolutely asinine which means they have a real chance in that state forsaken by the major deities of every religion:

SB 124 would create a broadly expanded and technically flawed definition of handgun ammunition which would encompass virtually all rifle cartridges. It would also ban the possession of many types of rifle cartridges and make it a felony to possess them. SB 124 doesn’t stop there, it could also ban virtually all non-lead ammunition used in California by reclassifying them as “armor piercing.” If passed, this bill could result in a complete ban on hunting in the California condor zone in which the use of lead ammunition is prohibited for hunting.

In an effort to further stifle law-abiding gun owners from exercising their right to keep and bear arms, anti-gun Assemblyman Anthony Portantino (D-44) has introduced legislation that would change the state’s gun laws and prohibit law-abiding citizens from carrying an unloaded handgun openly. It is currently legal to carry an unloaded handgun into most public places within the state, including restaurants and malls, but if approved, AB 144 would make it a misdemeanor to carry an unloaded handgun in public under most circumstances.

AB 809, introduced again by F-rated Assemblyman Mike Feuer (D-42), would establish a state registration system, similar to the one currently in place for handguns, for all newly-acquired rifles and shotguns. Under AB809, the make, model and serial number of the firearm as well as the identifying information of the purchaser would be recorded and kept on file by the California Attorney General’s office.

Banning, registration, and removal of a right all in one hearing. Those statist fucks in California’s legislature sure are a busy bunch. Honestly, if you’re a gun owner who lives in California it would be smart to just move. I think the state is completely beyond help at this point and there is not chance of reforming it back to a place where free people may live. Get out of there before they make it illegal to leave the state without papers and direct permission from the state government.

Meet the Glock Service Revolver

Holy shit, Glock apparently released a service revolver and the entire Internet missed it. From the article:

With the door locked and children in the next room, Bolin holds his former service revolver, a Glock 21, 45 acp.

Something isn’t quite right there but I can’t put my finger on it.

HS Produkt VHS Rifle

HS Produkt is probably best known as the manufacturer of the pistol known in America as the Springfield XD. Being the manufacturer of the XD means your company has at least some established track record of making great firearms and thus people are more likely to take interest in other weapons you make. Enter the VHS assault rifle, HS Produkt’s latest entry into the small arms market.

I will say that the VHS looks like an interesting rifle. The rifle looks pretty ugly but that’s not really an issue of the firearm works well. It’s also good to see that in this day an age Croatia still concerns themselves with mounting bayonets on their modern rifles. What good is a rifle if you can stick a knife at the end of it and stab somebody? I’ll tell you, it’s no good at all.

iPad Makes a Great Video Player

I’m sure it comes as no surprise that I don’t purchase physical media all that often. Most of the movies I buy are purchased via iTunes. The reason for this is because iTunes has a good selection of movies, I can play movies on any of my computers, and my movies can be loaded onto my iPad and iPhone. If there is a downside it’s the fact that plugging a computer into a friend’s television isn’t always a straight forward way to watch a movie and most movies played via a computer on a CRT television look like shit.

Realizing the iPad is far more portable than a television and that I sometimes like to bring movies to my friends’ houses I decided to purchase a set of Component AV Cables for use with my iPad and iPhone. Last night was the first time I actually used them and I’m happy to report they work great. The test movie was the high definition version of Tron: Legacy which looked absolutely great playing off of my iPad. It also beat the Hell out of trying to hook a laptop up to the television. Being everything has a downside one is apparently made using the iPad, there is no remote control. If you want to pause the move you have to go over to the iPad and tap the pause button on the screen. Not a big deal but it’s honestly the only downside I could find to this setup.

While playing a movie on an external display you can turn the iPad’s screen off and the movie will continue to play. However if you leave the Video app the movie will stop playing which is probably a side effect of allowing other applications to utilize the video-out capabilities of the iPad. I will also note that if you get an e-mail or other message on the iPad while it’s hooked into a television the notification sound plays on the television so it’s a good idea to turn your networking capabilities off while watching a movie if you get as many e-mails as I do.

Needless to say I really like the iPad as a video playing device. There is no real setup required beyond plugging the component cables into the television and pressing play on the iPad.

We Lose a Lot of Shipping Containers

File this story under things that I just find kind of interesting. I didn’t realize we lost an average of 10,000 shipping containers at sea every year:

Right now, as you read this, there are five or six million shipping containers on enormous cargo ships sailing across the world’s oceans. And about every hour, on average, one is falling overboard never to be seen again. It’s estimated that 10,000 of these large containers are lost at sea each year, and our understanding of what happens to them afterwards is scant at best.

That’s a lot of lost revenue and material. The story itself is an interesting read as it goes over the environmental impact these containers have. Personally I just found the sheer number of lost containers to be much higher than anything I would have expected.