More Junkmail from Bob!

Twenty Seconds and a Box Canyon

A box canyon is a canyon with steep sides and an end, so that it looks like a 3-sided box. In aviation, the term is used to describe valleys that may not necessarily have such steep sides, but they may as well be vertical because the sides and end of the valleys rise faster than a plane can climb.

Box canyons are fairly popular places to kill yourself in an airplane. Suppose you're flying along around some mountains, and see a nice, wide valley to fly up. Maybe it's a couple miles wide. Maybe you don't really notice that the terrain is rising as you go up the valley. It's hard to tell just by looking.

As you fly into the valley, you eventually notice that the trees are getting bigger. And the valley is getting narrower. And then you notice that it doesn't look like you can climb fast enough to clear the end of the valley. So you decide to turn around. But the valley is too narrow to make the turn. At this point, your options are extremely limited. If you can't climb out and you can't turn around, you are going to hit the ground. It has something to do with the laws of physics.

You might ask who would be stupid enough to do something like this. It turns out that quite a few people are. Unlike some lethal aviation traps, this one does not require large amounts of stupidity. It seems safe at first, but things get gradually worse. If you don't realize it before it's too late, then it's too late.

Here are some recent examples from the NTSB. The majority of "box canyon" accidents are fatal.

      http://www.ntsb.gov/NTSB/brief ...
      http://www.ntsb.gov/NTSB/brief ...
      http://www.ntsb.gov/NTSB/brief ...
      http://www.ntsb.gov/NTSB/brief ...
      http://www.ntsb.gov/NTSB/brief ...
      http://www.ntsb.gov/NTSB/brief ...
      http://www.ntsb.gov/NTSB/brief ...
      http://www.ntsb.gov/NTSB/brief ...
      http://www.ntsb.gov/NTSB/brief ...
      http://www.ntsb.gov/NTSB/brief ...
      http://www.ntsb.gov/NTSB/brief ...

In this accident, a flight instructor and student stalled their plane into the ground, trying to turn around in a box canyon:

      http://www.ntsb.gov/NTSB/brief ...

You can create an artificial box canyon if you use controlled airspace and skyscrapers instead of mountains. And you can kill yourself if you fly into one. But in an artificial box canyon it's easier to violate the laws of the FAA and escape, as opposed to the laws of physics controlling a natural box canyon. Even so, you have to think ahead.

Baseball pitcher Cory Lidle died in a famous accident about six weeks ago. It has been all over the news. He was flying with a flight instructor up the East River, just east of Manhattan.

They were flying about 600 feet high, lower than the buildings on the left. At 1200 feet and above was controlled airspace, and there were clouds at 1800 feet. On the left, on the right, and ahead of them was controlled airspace. They were flying up an artificial box canyon, 2100 feet wide.

But they were 400 feet left of the right edge when they began their 180° turn to the left. The wind was blowing from the right at 13 knots, effectively reducing their turning diameter by about another 400 feet. Even so, they could have made the turn. It would have required a 53° bank with 1.7 g's.

That is possible to do, but it's not normal. It's substantially steeper than the "steep turns" required to get a pilot license. They didn't turn that sharp, at least not at first. They ended up making too wide a turn, hit a building, and died.

They started the turn at 2:41:20 pm. Twenty seconds later, they were both dead.

What were the alternatives? Lots. Call for clearance and fly over Central Park. Bust Class B airspace. Fly unannounced into LaGuardia airport and land in the big middle of everything. It would have been better than dying. But it just didn't seem that dangerous when they started the turn.

      http://ntsb.gov/Pressrel/2006/ ...

      http://ntsb.gov/Pressrel/2006/ ...

Since the accident, the FAA has required airplanes flying up the East River to be under air traffic control. That will make it quicker and easier to get permission to fly out of that box canyon.

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Secret Interrogation

The CIA used to have secret prisons where they held enemies of the state without charge. No longer. Sure, the prisons are still there, and the prisoners have not been charged. But it's not secret any more. Bush explained that the prisons are scattered around the world, and that "alternative interrogation methods" are used, rather than torture.

      http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITI ...

I think I would prefer the CIA's interrogation techniques to the electric drills commonly used in Baghdad. But I also think that people should not be arbitrarily imprisoned.

The White House said that the prisoners (or detainees) in these secret (but publicly acknowledged) prisons should not be allowed lawyers lest they reveal the details of these alternative interrogation techniques.

The government said in court filings that those interrogation methods are now among the nation's most sensitive national security secrets and that their release -- even to the detainees' own attorneys -- "could reasonably be expected to cause extremely grave damage."

      http://www.washingtonpost.com/ ...

I think the damage would be political more than anything else, particularly since the "alternative interrogation techniques" are fairly well documented.

      http://hrw.org/backgrounder/us ...

      http://www.iht.com/articles/20 ...

I can imagine myself in a CIA prison, enjoying long hours chained against a wall standing up, when the CIA man slaps me in the belly and says, "Well, Bob, we've determined you're innocent. These long months of alternative interrogation have finally paid off."

"Great!" I reply. "When can I go home?"

"Well, there's a problem with that. We can never let you leave, because now you know our secret interrogation techniques."

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Blue Screen of Death

The Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) is that screen of white text on a blue background that you occasionally see when Windows crashes. It is not too common on XP, but I have seen it (and caused it, for that matter.)

The natural response to the Blue Screen of Death, genetically bred into generations of humans over the past 20 years, is to hit the hard reset button hard. This is more difficult on a laptop, where you have to hold down the power button for five seconds. There are several varieties of the Blue Screen of Death, but all are instantly recognizable by the white DOS font on the blue background.

In honor of the Blue Screen of Death, Sysinternals has produced the Blue Screen of Death Screensaver. Here's the BSOD Screensaver:

      http://xpda.com/junkmail/junk1 ...

Warning: Do NOT put this on someone's computer without their knowledge, else they're liable to hit reset every time the computer goes into screen save mode. Unless it's my brother Mike's computer.

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Pay per View DVD?

Load 'n Go is a company that sells iPods pre-loaded with a selection of movies chosen by the purchasers. The company purchases the DVDs and includes them with the iPod. That should make everything legal, right? Not according to the Motion Picture Association of America. They're suing Load 'n Go for copyright infringement.

Let me go over this again. Load 'n Go buys a DVD or two, preloads them onto an iPod, then sells the iPod together with the original DVDs. How can that be illegal?

It's easy. The MPAA pays politicians and lobbyists millions of dollars to get stupid laws passed. They say that you can buy a movie on DVD, but you have to buy it again if you want to put it on your iPod. And that's the law as it stands today. Tomorrow it may be worse.

      http://blogs.siliconvalley.com ...

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Fauxtographic Evidence

This photo appeared in the July 31 issue of Time Magazine...

      

...along with this caption: "The wreckage of a downed Israeli jet that was targeting Hizballah trucks billows smoke behind an armed Hizballah gunman in Kfar Chima, near Beirut. Jet fuel set the surrounding area ablaze."

There is one minor problem with this. It wasn't a downed Israeli jet that was burning. It fact, it wasn't a jet at all, and jet fuel did not set the surrounding area ablaze. Here's the original caption that the photographer, Bruno Stevens, sent to Time along with the photo:

"Kfar Chima, near Beirut, July 17, 2006 -- An Israeli Air Force F16 has alledgedly been shot down while bombing a group of Hezbollah owned trucks, at least one of these trucks contained a medium range ground to ground missile launcher."

After learning more, he changed the caption to this:

"Kfar Chima, near Beirut, July 17, 2006 -- The Israeli Air Force bombed a group of Hezbollah chartered trucks parked on the back of large Lebanese Army barracks, at least one of these trucks contained a medium range ground to ground missile launcher, at least one missile was hit, misfiring high into the sky before falling down and starting a huge fire in the barracks' parking lot."

He doesn't seem to be particularly pro-Israel, and in fact he took several photos that make Israel look bad. But this is not one of them. Israel destroyed a missile that would have otherwise been shot at them. I think Time was adding a little fictional sensationalism to the story.

      http://www.lightstalkers.org/t ...

      http://www.time.com/time/magaz ...

      http://www.honestreporting.c ...

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Chernobyl

In April 1986, there was a steam explosion, fire, and meltdown in one of the four reactors of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Around 50 or 60 people died as a direct result of the meltdown, and 9,000 more died or will die from the radiation, according to the World Health Organization. Some people claim that number of dead is more like 80,000, and some say it's a lot less than 9,000. 100,000 to 300,000 people were relocated from the area, depending on who you ask.

Here are some good recent photos of the Chernobyl.

      http://englishrussia.com/?p=293

      http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~d ...

I'm sure you remember the March 10, 2004 Junkmail where I included the "Kid of Speed" pho ... . It's about Elena Vladimirovna Filatova, who rode her motorcycle around the Chernobyl area. It turned out that she didn't really ride her cycle into the restricted zone, but the photos are still pretty popular. Her latest web site has some more photos, other projects, and she has corrected some of the "literary license" she took in her original site.

      http://elenafilatova.com/

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Tsar Bomba

The USSR "King of Bombs" should probably have been included in the last Junkmail. It was the most powerful bomb ever exploded on earth. Well, it was actually 13,000 feet above the earth when the 50-megaton blast blew.

      http://nuclearweaponarchive.or ...

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Finnegan's Quarks

James Joyce wrote Finnegan's Wake sometime around 1939. I read a little bit of it, but lost interest due to odd language and lack of submarines and airplanes. This song is in Finnegan's Wake:"

----Three quarks for Muster Mark! Sure he hasn't got much of a bark And sure any he has it's all beside the mark. But O, Wreneagle Almighty, wouldn't un be a sky of a lark To see that old buzzard whooping about for uns shirt in the dark And he hunting round for uns speckled trousers around by Palmerstown Park? Hohohoho, moulty Mark! You're the rummest old rooster ever flopped out of a Noah's ark And you think you're cock of the wark. Fowls, up! Tristy's the spry young spark That'll tread her and wed her and bed her and red her Without ever winking the tail of a feather And that's how that chap's going to make his money and mark!

George Zweig was a grad student at Cal Tech in 1964 when he proposed the existence of quarks, except he called them Aces. About the same time, Murray Gell-Mann, a really smart guy teaching at the same university, came up with a similar model. Murray named his subatomic particles "quarks," from the song in Finnegan's Wake. "Quark" stuck.

Protons, neutrons, and some other subatomic particles are made up of quarks. An electron is apparently made up of nothing but an electron. There are several other particles made up of quarks.

At Fermilab in Illinois, the Tevatron collider is used to smash protons and antiprotons into each other, going really fast. This annihilates the protons and antiprotons and spews out lots of other subatomic particles.

As you can imagine, it's pretty hard to figure out what's flying out of a collision between a proton and an antiproton. They use the CDF, Collision Detector at Fermilab. Hundreds of physicists from over 60 institutions in 13 countries are working on this.

      http://www.fnal.gov/pub/pressp ...

     http://www-cdf.fnal.gov/%7Ec ...

Last month they announced the discovery of two new subatomic particles, the Σ^-_b and the Σ⁺_b baryons. These each have about six times the mass of a proton, and decay in a tiny fraction of a second. The Σ_b's were predicted to exist in quark theory. The discovered particles exhibit the proper spins of J=1/2 and J=3/2.

      http://www.fnal.gov/pub/pressp ...

I don't understand the details behind this stuff, but it's still pretty interesting. When I learned about atoms, they were made up only of protons, neutrons, and electrons. Atoms have gotten a lot more complex since then.

Another discovery at Fermilab this year was the oscillation of the B_s meson between matter and antimatter at 3 trillion times per second. This seems very strange, but it really happens and may have some big implications.

      http://www.fnal.gov/pub/pressp ...

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Humming

Directors of the housing authorities at Seattle, Tacoma, and Everett Washington drive their own cars. Kurt, the director of the Vancouver, Washington Housing Authority, spent 37,000 tax dollars on a new Hummer. He uses it for personal and official driving. That sounds a little fishy to me. I think Kurt needs some fiduciary supervision.

      http://www.kirotv.com/news/103 ...

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Mars Global Surveyor

The polar ice is retreating -- on Mars. The South Polar Ice Cap has shrunk over the past few years, about 3 meters per year. This was caused almost entirely by greenhouse gas. That's because the ice caps are mostly made of the notorious greenhouse gas CO₂ instead of H₂O.

Mars Global Surveyor took these photos of the same area from 1999 to 2005.

      http://www.msss.com/mars_image ...

The spacecraft was launched on November 7, 1996.

      

Mars Global Surveyor seems to have died last November 2, just 5 days short of 10 years of service.

Here's a 1997 photo showing layered rock in the Valles Marineris.

      

Here are some more rock layers from Valles Marineris.

      

      http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mgs/n ...

More on mars:

      http://xpda.com/mars

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Today's Stupid Software Patent

U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has excelled once again, this time with patent number 7028023. It was issued last April to LSI Logic. It patents the stunning new concept of using a linked list with multiple sets of pointers for multiple sequences.

This has commonly been used in programming since the days of Algol 68. I used this technique for the first time more than 25 yeas ago. Doubly linked lists are common in Computer Science textbooks, and linking graphical data in both X and Y directions has been done since Pythagoras. Well, at least since the IBM 1130.

      http://www.patentstorm.us/pate ...

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Deer Hunting

A guy named Joseph was driving his Chevy Cavalier along a road one night in Vermont with his daughter and girlfriend. He spotted a deer out in a meadow. He took off toward the deer, shined a light on it, and rammed it with his car.

The deer was a decoy. A game warden and two deputies were hiding in the bushes, hoping to catch "spotlighters." Joseph is in trouble.

      http://www.burlingtonfreepress ...

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Colliers

I bought a copy of a 1949 Colliers magazine. The article I wanted to read was OK, but I thought the magazine itself was more interesting.

In the last Junkmail I mentioned Ben Scott Custer, the captain of the USS Norfolk Sound in World War II. He went on to become a rear admiral and president of Columbia University. He also was on a plane that crash landed in the backwoods of Canada, and spent a few days getting out. Here's the article he wrote for Colliers:

      http://xpda.com/junkmail/junk1 ...

This is from a Camel cigarette ad:

In a recent test, hundreds of men and women, from coast to coast, smoked Camels, and only Camels, for 30 days -- an average of 1 to 2 packs a day. Each week, their throats were examined by noted throat specialists. After a total of 2470 thorough examinations, these doctors reported NO THROAT IRRITATION DUE TO SMOKING CAMELS!

"More doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette."

      

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Bots and DoS and Spam

You may have noticed that you've been getting a lot more spam recently. Spam is on the increase worldwide. How do you handle the excess spam? Here's are a few ideas. Spam and jamcakes, spam and eggs, or spam cheeseburgers:

      

In January 2004, President Bush signed the Can-Spam act into law.

      http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline ...

In 2004, Bill Gates said the spam problem would be solved by 2006.

      http://www.cbsnews.com/stories ...

The spam problem could be fixed right away. All that needs to be done is to prosecute the people (a) sending the spam, or (b) using the spam for advertising. (b) is a lot easier, since you only have to follow the money.

(a) is a little harder because spammers are sending a large percentage of spam from zombie computers. They send out a trojan such as SpamThru, then control a net of thousands of computers. When it's time to spam, each of these zombie computers sends out a few thousand emails. The computer users usually don't even know about it.

      http://www.theregister.co.uk/2 ...

But it is still possible to track down the spam senders. The U.S. government certainly has the resources. They could stop 95% of the spam inundating my inbox if they would only enforce the law. Maybe they're too busy keeping bottles of hand lotion off airplanes.

I went to the FTC web site to see how to stop spam. Among other things such as forwarding my spam to my internet service provider, they recommend opting out. Right. That just confirms you have read the spam, possibly promoting you a more active email list.

Then I called the FTC help line. Yeah, yeah, I was bored. After three minutes of recordings, I got a message saying the same thing the web site said. I never did get the option to speak to a real person.

Then I called someone with public relations at the FTC. A human answered the phone! I asked how many Can-Spam cases the FTC has prosecuted. She said she'd call back and let me know. I'll update the web site (http://xpda.com/junkmail?issue=186) if I find out.

[ I found out! She called back and explained that the FTC has brought 89 spam-related cases against 241 corporate and personal defendants. 26 of these were prosecuted under the Can-Spam act. So the FTC is not ignoring the problem -- they just haven't gotten to my spammers yet.  11/30/06 ]

A lot of people have must have noticed the recent surge in spam. Here are a bunch of articles about it.

      http://www.networkworld.com/ne ...

      http://newsblaze.com/story/200 ...

      http://www.wired.com/wired/arc ...

      http://www.sci-tech-today.com/ ...

      http://www.theregister.co.uk/2 ...

      http://www.eweek.com/article2/ ...

      http://www.eweek.com/article2/ ...

      http://www.networkworld.com/ne ...

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Flying Rocks

A couple of Junkmails ago I mentioned a meteorite that was discovered in Kansas using ground penetrating radar. I thought that was pretty cool. I also mentioned a meteorite smashing into a house in Germany and starting a fire. (The Reuters links have gone away.)

      http://space.about.com/b/a/256 ...

Phil Plait mentioned that while this is possible, it is highly unlikely.

      http://www.badastronomy.com/ba ...

He's right. Most likely the cottage burned down due to natural causes, such as electricity or man-made fire. Maybe that's why the Reuters links all went away?

The Bad Astronomy blog is pretty good. It even contains facts.

      http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog

In 1992 it was highly unlikely for a meteorite to smash into a car in New York, but that time it really happened.

      http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/ap ...

It happened on a Friday night in October when lots of people were at high school football games with video and still cameras. Here's a nice photo of the meteorite on the way down, after it started breaking up.

      

Here are some videos:

      http://aquarid.physics.uwo.ca/ ...

Details:

      http://www.astro.uwo.ca/%7Epbr ...

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Border Guards and Bribery

In Texas, border guards are now taking bribes to allow illegal aliens and contraband into the U.S.

      http://www.mysanantonio.com/ne ...

The Texas Ethics Commission took action. Now Texas officials are no longer required to report the amount of cash they receive as a gift, only that they received some cash.

      http://www.mysanantonio.com/ne ...

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The War on Tourism

Headlines: "Acid bomb detonated in Walmart." The fact is that a couple of kids put some stomach antacid into a plastic bottle of Coke, and left it in Walmart to make a mess. It makes a pretty decent pop when the bottle bursts, but it's just not as scary as an "acid bomb" being "detonated." Unfortunately, thanks to the current climate of fear, those kids face felony charges.

      http://morningsentinel.maineto ...

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Real Climate

It's hard to separate the science from the politics in climatology. There are a lot of people pushing one way or another, partly because there is a lot of money affected by the politics involved. Here is a good site by some top people in the field. The site comes complete with facts and references, without the frequently associated political slant one direction or another.

      http://www.realclimate.org

This blurb says a lot about the climate science you read in the news:

"However, there is a bit of a cottage industry of people who micro-parse every new paper to see how it projects onto a narrow view of the climate change debate regardless of their actual relevance. This is a travesty of the way science is supposed to work and all too often ends up getting the story completely wrong." http://www.realclimate.org/i ...

So where does the world stand with climate change, global warming, and other catch phrases? The earth is getting a little warmer. Some of this is caused by greenhouse gases produced by people burning coal, oil, and gas. The rise in sea level is barely measurable. Most climate models predict a more rapid temperature increase in the future, along with associated problems, especially if the current levels of greenhouse gas emissions continue.

I was pretty skeptical about global warming a few years ago, but there has been a lot of hard data collected over the past few years that convinced me there must be something to it. I'm pretty sure that people will continue to burn coal, oil, and gas as long as they are cheapest energy sources available, although there should be a trend toward solar, wind, and nuclear energy.

And the politics of it? One of my elected representatives to the U.S. Senate calls global warming "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people." I think he must have forgotten about Y2K.

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Pictures of Today!

Winter's coming! These were near Twin Lakes, Colorado last week:

                  

Winter's coming! These red-winged blackbirds have left Oklahoma:

                

A scanner makes a pretty good 20x to 30x microscope. These are scans from my Epson 4180 scanner.

A penny:

      

Here is about 5/8" of a Canadian twenty dollar bill. There is a lot of detail!

      

Part of an oak leaf:

      

About 1/4" of a rock:

      

The shirt off my back:

      

More Junkmail from Bob, Nov 16, 2006

Jurassic Computing

I ran across some old 5.25" floppy disks the other day. These are the real, floppy floppies. I hunted up a 5.25" drive from some old computer parts, and scrounged a floppy drive cable with the card-edge connector. (It had places for four floppy drives.) I plugged it all in to an old PC. It didn't work.

Then I reconfigured the BIOS and it worked. I had forgotten about that.

I had a 1986 version of ProDesign II that I copied to my hard drive. ProDesign II is the predecessor to DesignCAD, which is still on the market today. ProDesign II still runs! I thought this was pretty cool, because I wrote it.

It's a DOS program, but runs fine under the Command Prompt of Windows XP. Well, it runs fairly fine. It's a little shaky on my new GeForce 7600 GT display card, but it's reasonably stable on my laptop and another computer I tested. That one uses the video off the Intel motherboard.

Check it out!

      http://xpda.com/ProDesignII

You might want to be a little careful with the setup. I had good luck with the 128K EGA setting. But the display drivers use low level input and output instructions that communicate directly with the display adapter without going through Windows, DOS, or the Transportation Safety Administration. I was pretty surprised to find today's adapters still compatible.

You can use a mouse only of you have a serial port, even if the mouse uses something else. Just set it up as a Microsoft mouse.

In 1986, Windows 1.0 was a year old. I was convinced it was a lousy product, couldn't understand why anybody would ever buy it, and expected Windows to go away in a couple of years.

DOS applications used internal drivers. For example, I got to write a driver for every graphics card supported by ProDesign II. Here's a copy of a VGA driver from the late 1980's, in case you like to read assembly language. It supports several display adapters.

      http://xpda.com/junkmail/junk185/vgadriver.txt

I also have some public domain software on old diskettes. There's a 1981 (1983? 1986?) version of Matlab, some other science and math software, and lots of what's known in the computing arena as "other stuff." You can download the 25-year-old software here:

      http://xpda.com/floppies

Here are some tips on getting DOS applications running on Windows XP.

      http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314106

If all else fails, most of these should run under Win 98 or Me MSDOS mode.

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Digital Rights Management

"Digital rights management" is the new buzzword that replaces "copy protection." Like many terms that gain an unsavory reputation, "copy protection" was magically transformed into DRM, or digital rights management. Now copy protected music is no longer copy protected. I'm not sure what the adjective is for "digital rights management," but whatever it is, that's what's happening to music. I guess maybe it's DRM'ed music.

The transformation from "copy protection" to "digital rights management" was not magical. It was a deliberate and expensive public relations effort by Microsoft, the RIAA, the MPAA, and more than a few political lobbyists.

DRM is the technology that allows you to download and play a song for your iPod, but prevents you from copying that song for your friends, neighbors, and relatives. I'm not sure whether it prevents copying for enemies and strangers -- that may come in the next version.

The technology extends to videos, movies, software, books, and photos. If I want to put a movie on the video.google.com, I can protect it so people have to pay me $1 or ¥6,275 or some amount before they can download it to their own computer.

Microsoft's version of DRM is called Windows Media DRM. It is used on Windows Media Player and some other devices and software.

     http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/forpros/drm/faq.aspx#drmfaq_1_1

With Windows Media Player 11, you can download DRM music (after you pay for it) and keep it on your computer. It usually comes as a .wma or .wmv file. It might not be a good idea to build a large music library this way, however, if you intend to keep it very long. You cannot backup your DRM licenses with Windows Media Player 11 like you can with Windows Media Player 10. Here's a somewhat slanted article (i.e., rant) on that subject:

      http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=34523

When you change hard drives, or when your hard drive dies, or when you get a new computer, etc., you will have to request (i.e., beg) the music company of each file you have to give you a new license for your new "device." They may or may not be inclined to help you out.

     http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/player/11/readme.aspx#1608319

     http://www.intelliadmin.com/blog/2006/10/microsoft-releases-new-version-of.html

It is illegal to sell music players and software that "crack" the DRM music. But that's not enough. The recording industry it asking Congress to make it illegal to sell music players and software that play unprotected files and videos, such as .mp3 and .mpg files.

They would require all CD and DVD Writers to support the "industry standard" DRM schemes and nothing else. Everybody would have to convert all their current files to the new RIAA and MPAA formats. I think there is a fair chance of this happening in a few years.

Here's a heart-warming song about downloading .mp3's. This illegal copy is on Youtube.

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IdnpXjs1m8&NR

Here is an excellent article on downloading rules. It begins:
 

The Recording Industry Association of America has enriched your life through music since you were a baby. But now you betray us? We will destroy you. This is your notice that you will be sued for one of the following: 1. Downloading a song from the Internet. 2. Singing the "Happy Birthday" song. 3. Other. 4. None of the above. ... ...

for the rest:

      http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2006/9/20lloyd.html

Microsoft is using DRM for Windows Vista. They originally were going to allow you to make only one major change in your hardware configuration. The second time, Windows Vista would stop working unless you called Microsoft and they made an exception for you, which they were under no obligation to do. After a minor uproar, they eased this policy a bit. I suspect this is only a temporary reprieve.

      http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-6131900.html

XP is not a lot better. Last week I added a DVD drive to my computer. I had to re-authenticate Windows XP. The third Windows XP CD I tried had the right product key on it. This happened to me one other time. I couldn't find the right CD and I had to re-install everything. I was not happy.

If you have a record or tape (a "sound recording") made before 1972, it is not protected under federal copyright law.

      http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ22.html

But I think there are some state laws and "common law" the RIAA uses to sue people. According to the recording industry, there are no public domain sound recordings. Also, according to the recording industry, if you have a vinyl record and copy it to CD or computer for your own use, you are breaking the law.

Furthermore, according to the RIAA, if you breathe any air that could have been previously breathed by a recording copyright holder, you must pay the RIAA $3750 for each day that you have breathed that air. (This applies only to those residing on or near the surface of the earth.)

      http://www.copyright.cornell.edu/training/Hirtle_Public_Domain.htm

In spite of all this, I recorded a vinyl record to my computer. I was hoping for a free trip to Cuba, but it hasn't happened yet. So I called the record company, the RIAA, the MPAA, Microsoft, the Latvian Embassy, and the dog pound. None of them could tell me whether this song was copyrighted or in the public domain. I was very disappointed with the dog pound for not knowing.

---

EMP

An electromagnetic pulse is sometimes generated by a high-altitude nuclear explosion. This can cause electrical problems similar to a coronal mass ejection (CME) by the sun, except maybe a lot worse.

      http://xpda.com/junkmail/junk145/junk145.htm

How bad is it? Not as bad as you might have seen in movies or read in some books. After all, the megaton bomb tests of the 50s and 60s didn't destroy a single Pentium CPU.

One test, called the Starfish Prime shot, exploded a 1.6 megaton fusion bomb about 250 miles above the South Pacific in 1962. I guess it was technically a missile rather than a bomb, since bombers don't normally fly that high, and this bomb was on the end of a Thor missile. The 1.6 megaton explosion is equivalent to about 3,500,000,000 pounds of TNT.

They called this the Starfish Prime shot because they had a slight problem with the first Starfish shot. The missile's engine died about 59 seconds into the launch. The self-destruct signal was sent at 65 seconds, and the missile and warhead were blown up (with no nuclear "yield") about six miles up in the air. Some of the wreckage ended up on Johnston Island, but most fell on Sand Island.

TNT and ammonium nitrate are in the same neighborhood as far as explosive strength. On Wednesday evening sometime around 1972, a warehouse at the Cherokee Nitrogen fertilizer plant outside Pryor caught on fire. About 900 lbs of ammonium nitrate blew up when a wall fell on it. It blew out some windows on Main Street, almost 5 miles away. 3,500,000,000 lbs must make a pretty big boom.

You might wander what that would look like, especially since it went off at night.

Here it is from an observation plane:

      

And from Honolulu, under some clouds:

      

The Starfish Shot generated a radiation belt that killed or injured seven (or so) satellites in low orbit. It also caused some power spikes along some power lines in Hawaii, about 800 miles away.

Thirty strings of streetlights were knocked out from a voltage spike similar (but shorter and stronger) than those generated from CMEs. Lots of other power line breakers were tripped. Burglar alarms were set off. Some electronic equipment died, probably from transients on the power lines. There is anecdotal evidence of car ignitions fusing.

That same year, Russia detonated a 0.3 megaton nuclear explosion at about 180 miles altitude. It fused 350 miles of overhead telephone line, started a power plant fire and shut down 600 miles of buried power cables. I'm not sure whether the shutdown was because of the fire or the EMP. One difference between the Russian and Hawaiian damage is that Russia's power lines and phone lines run for hundreds of miles, but the largest island in Hawaii is less than 100 miles in diameter. The long lines in Russia (and Oklahoma) provide a better receptor for the EMP energy.

The Starfish shot was 1.6 megatons. The Sedan shot was exploded a few weeks later in Nevada 635 feet underground. It was 0.1 megatons. It made a small hole in the ground, 1/4 mile in diameter and 320 feet deep. You can find this on Google Earth or planet Earth at 37°10.37' N 116°2.46' W. The purpose of the Sedan shot was to test the use of nuclear explosions for earth moving applications. It moved around 12 million tons.

                  

      http://ndep.nv.gov/boff/photo02.htm

What about an EMP today, 44 years later? Modern electronics may be more vulnerable to EMP than older tube and large-transistor systems, but modern electrical equipment, phones, and consumer electronics are probably more resistant to voltage spikes. Power lines are supposed to have much better protection against transients today. I haven't tested any power lines to make sure, though. Today's satellites are more resistant to radiation than they were 40 years ago.

The damage from EMP is limited, for the most part, to line-of-sight distance from the explosion. It is more powerful at certain altitudes. I think if I had a fusion bomb and wanted to use it for major destruction, I'd use it near the surface. Missing cities are a lot more impressive than broken electronics.

Here's a detailed article on EMP:

     http://glasstone.blogspot.com/2006/03/emp-radiation-from-nuclear-space.html

The Starfish shot wasn't just a shot in the dark. They launched some smaller warheads in 1958 to see if any "military significant effects" could be produced by high nuclear explosions. They could.

In May 1958, the U.S. exploded three "low yield" 1.7 kiloton missiles 100, 182, and 466 miles high. The USS Norton Sound launched the Argus X-17a missiles 1100 miles south of Africa.

      

Here are details on the Argus tests:

      http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Tests/Argus.html

Here's the Norton Sound:

            

It started out life as a seaplane tender in late World War II.

            

Here's a photo of a Captain Ben Scott Custer inspecting the Norton Sound shortly before the new ship left for battle in World War II.

      

Captain Custer was known for running a tight ship. Here's a story told to Albert F. Becker Jr. by his father, one of Custer's crew:

 

Many former crewmen have already spoken of Captain Ben Scott Custer's strictness and desire to run a tight, clean ship. It was clear he demanded that all crewmen wear the proper uniform of the day at all times. But there were times when some of the crewmen might have thought he could take his strictness too far. Sometime in June, 1945, so my father told me, the starboard watch was up for its normal weekly personnel inspection, meaning clean whites and spit shined shoes. As Custer strode up and down the neat rows of sailors on the hangar deck, the PA system suddenly erupted with the alarm for general quarters. The men started to break for their stations, only to be brought up short by Custer's voice, cracking like a whip across the deck. "Hold your positions!" he ordered. Amazed, the men peered at each other, but then reassembled to permit Custer to finish his inspection. Then--and only then--did he release the crew to their stations. It seems an incredible story, but my father insisted it really happened. And I don't think Custer was crazy, either; only affirming to the men his devotion to Navy tradition. By God, no one--not even the Japanese--was going to interrupt one of his inspections!

Custer left the Norton Sound in 1946. He went on to become a Rear Admiral, got a PhD in American History, and was president of Columbia University.

      

Here is some info on, stories about, and photos of the USS Norton Sound:

      http://www.ussnortonsound.com/

Here are is some info and pretty pictures of nuclear explosions:

      http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Tests/

This was 3 megatons at 8000 feet, near Christmas Island in 1962.

      

This was 210 kilotons at 7000 feet, near Christmas Island in 1962.

      

Here is an anti-submarine nuclear missile, less than 20 kilotons, 400 miles off San Diego in 1962. It was launched from the USS Agerholm.

                  

This photo was taken through the periscope of submarine USS Carbonero, thirty miles from the explosion near Christmas Island in 1962. The 600 kiloton Polaris A1 missile was launched about 1000 miles away, by the submarine USS Ethan Allen.

      

The US and USSR each exploded more than 100 nuclear weapons in 1961 and 1962. It was almost like they were preparing for war with each other.

Here's one going off from underwater:

      

---

Atomic Bombs

Atomic bombs were popular back in the 1950s and 1960s. Then, amazingly, the term acquired a negative connotation. So they started calling them nuclear weapons. Atomic (or nuclear) fission and fusion would be a little more accurate, but then they'd have to come up with new words for fishin' and phishin'.

All this thinking about uncontrolled nuclear fission reactions started when my baby sister Tricia called and suggested that we go on a bike ride. For 108 miles. Across White Sands Missile range. So we did!

It was a legal, organized ride, but we weren't allowed to take pictures or cameras. We started out at Tolarusa, rode up to within 12 miles of the Trinity Site where they exploded the first atomic nuclear fission phishin' bomb in 1945, ate lunch there, and looped back.

If you unzip this .gpx file and load it into Google Earth, you can see where we rode. Unless you have the latest beta version of Google Earth -- the .gpx input is broken in that one.

      http://xpda.com/whitesands/whitesands.zip

Here's info on the Trinity Site and the first Bomb.

      http://www.abomb1.org

Afterward, my knee hurt so I backed the car into a pole and smashed my sister's bicycle. This was also in retaliation of her baby daughter Claire backing a car over my bicycle wheel a few months ago.

White Sands is a desert area with very little water or vegetation. That explains this flood we found at White Sands National Monument.

      

Last August they had 16 inches of rain, more than double the previous record for a month. It rained some more in September and October. Since White Sands has no drainage, they have to wait and let the floodwater evaporate. This should happen in a month or three. Here are some pictures from White Sands National Monument (mostly):

      http://xpda.com/whitesands

---

Phishing is Popular

"Phishing" is fishing for usernames and passwords. To go fishing, sent out a few million emails redirecting people to fake web sites for banking, stock brokering, eBay, Paypal, or nuclear missile launch control. These fake sites should look like the originals, except they should log the usernames and passwords before redirecting to the intended site.

Sound complicated? No problem. Just download a phishing kit for the low, low price of a credit card number. Then you can go to town. Or jail. But the rate of arrest and conviction of phishers is somewhere near zero percent, kind of like spammers. Why do they pass those laws and forget to enforce them, anyway?

      http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-6126217.html

      http://news.com.com/2100-1029_3-6125991.html

---

Vegemite

News Flash!  Vegemite banned in the US -- all 11 customers outraged!

      http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,20623973-2,00.html

---

Saturn    

Here's a good photo of Saturn blacklit by the sun, taken by Cassini.

      

It's a mosaic of 165 images taken over three hours on September 15. Ultraviolet, infrared, and visible (clear filter) light bands make up the red, green, and blue colors of this image. I'm not sure which bands correspond to which colors. The resulting colors were enhanced quite a bit.

      http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA08329

Here's a good picture of Saturn's moon Janus, with Saturn in the background. It was taken September 25.

      

      http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA08296

On the south pole of Saturn, Cassini found this rotating storm. It's about 5000 miles in diameter, with winds of about 350 mph.

      

Here's a 3-second movie of the storm taken over three hours on October 11 (3mb):

      http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/archive/PIA08332.mov

Details:

      http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA08332

---

Think Snow!

The Beltsville Agricultural Research Center has a low temperature scanning electron microscope. That would be fun to have in the garage.

      

They've got some really cool (literally) snowflake photos.

              

      http://emu.arsusda.gov/snowsite/default.html

---

Luis Posada

Luis Posada was born 78 years ago in Cienfuegos, Cuba. He opposed the Castro revolution, and ended up in the U.S. in 1961. He got some training by the CIA in sabotage and explosives in preparation of the Bay of Pigs invasion, but he was not part of the failed effort.

In the 1960s, Luis worked for the CIA in Miami. In 1968, Luis was accused of "gangster connections" and had a falling out with the CIA. Went to Venezuela and was the chief of operations of the Venezuelan intelligence service for a few years. After a falling out with the bosses in Venezuela, Luis left the intelligence service and started a private detective agency there.

Around 1976 Luis was probably involved in some hotel bombings in Havana.

Luis was arrested in Venezuela after the 1976 bombing of a Cuban DC-8 airliner. Two people who blew up the plane worked for Luis in his private detective agency. He escaped a year later and fled to Chile.

Chile apparently didn't like Luis because they sent him back to Venezuela where he was promptly sent back to jail. Eight years later Luis escaped again, dressed as a priest.

In 2000, Luis tried to blow up Castro at a summit meeting in Panama. He was arrested and spent a few years in a Panamanian jail. In 2005, he was released and came back to the U.S., requesting asylum.

The U.S. denied Luis asylum. His lawyers say he was trying to sneak out of the U.S. when he was arrested for "unlawful entry." He has been in Immigration jail in El Paso ever since. Cuba and Venezuela have requested Luis's extradition, but the U.S. refuses on the grounds of insufficient evidence and/or that he will be tortured. Venezuela does have an extradition treaty with the U.S.

Some people are accusing the U.S. of not prosecuting Luis as a terrorist because he used to work for the CIA against Cuba. Some other people say the U.S. should release Luis because the 78-year-old is not hurting anybody and is a friend of the country. Some others say Luis should be detained indefinitely without charge, as a terrorist.

To top all this off, many the FBI's records concerning Luis are missing, making it tough for the U.S. to file charges against Luis. They are trying to get copies from a Washington Post journalist.

It all seems really strange to me. Someday I'll have to take the time to figure all this out.

     http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/posada.htm

     http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con ... AR2006111001384.html

     http://www.guardian.co.uk/cuba/story/0,,1930703,00.html

---

Chesapeake.com

Aspen Technology used to have a domain name called chesapeake.com. For almost 10 years, the city of Chesapeake, Virginia was asking them for the domain name. Finally, about a year ago, Aspen gave in and donated the name chesapeake.com to the city.

Then, Chesapeake Energy (an Oklahoma company) offered the city of Chesapeake $120,000 for the domain name. They sold it, less than a year after Aspen Technology donated to them.

The funny part about story is that nobody is even using the domain! You just get an error when you go to http://chesapeake.com

      http://content.hamptonroads.com/story.cfm?story=113271&ran=101133

---

Terrorists are Everywhere!

The Transportation Security Administration has a list of terrorists and terrorist sympathizers. I read that this list has about 200,000 names on it, but nobody's really saying for sure. But there have been 28,000 people go through the motions and submit several notarized copies of their identification to get removed from the list. The TSA isn't saying how many of them were successful.

Here's a somewhat critical article of the situation. I think if I'd written it I would have been a bit more critical.

      http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,70783-0.html

---

747 Firefighter

Evergreen is coming out with a Boeing 747 modified as a fire fighting tanker. It will carry a whole mess of fire retardant. "Whole mess" is a technical aviation term equivalent to 24,000 gallons. That's seven times more than the P3, today's largest fire fighting aircraft.

      

      http://www.evergreenaviation.com/supertanker/faq.html

---

Hard Drive Encryption

A few days ago Seagate announced encrypted hard drives for laptop computers. The encryption software is in hard drive firmware.

     http://www.seagate.com/cda/newsinfo/news ... /0,1121,3347,00.html

I thought that sounded familiar. They also announced it in June 2005.

     http://www.seagate.com/cda/newsinfo/newsroom/releases/article/0,,2732,00.html

I guess the new Drivetrust must be better.

---

Venus

This is a cool picture of Venus:

      http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap061030.html

---

Alibris

Here's a convenient place to find old or unusual books and music. They apparently keep track of inventory in a bunch of bookstores and music stores. You order from Alibris and they drop ship from the stores. Amazon has a lot of these, but not all.

      http://www.alibris.com/search/search.cfm

---

Adopt a Microbe

Finally -- here's a blog I can read without getting bored!

      http://adoptamicrobe.blogspot.com

My sister says I don't think like other people. Weird, huh?

---

Nuclear Club

Six Arab countries announced plans to buy, borrow, or develop nuclear power plants. Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, and the UAE. Nuclear power is good for generating electricity, desalinization of salt water, and making large explosions.

      http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2436948,00.html

California may have to do some nuclear desalinization before too long if they keep salting their farmland. Now THAT's a scary thought -- a nuclear California.

---

Macro Photos

Here are some great close-up photos of insects. (It's a Russian site -- some of the ads might not be G-rated.)

      http://pishmo.com/macro

---

Wifi Speed Spray

Check this out!  Speed up your wireless connection with Wifi Speed Spray. Art Linkletter's been using it successfully since 1948.

      http://j-walk.com/other/wifispray/

---

Raytheon UAV (or UAS)

Raytheon's Cobra Unmanned Aircraft System received and experimental airworthiness certificate last September. This includes the plane itself, the Cobra UAV, and a couple of control systems. They announced it a couple of weeks ago.

The Cobra is 10 feet long with a 9-foot wingspan. It looks a little like an ordinary radio controlled model plane, although the wheels are pretty fancy.

      http://xpda.com/junkmail/junk185/DSC02865.JPG

      http://xpda.com/junkmail/junk185/DSC02888.JPG

But it performs a little differently than most RC models. It has a range of 20 miles and can stay up over three hours. With a max weight of over 100 lbs, it can carry 45 lbs of fuel and equipment. It even carries a 500-watt generator.

The Cobra's wide fuselage is designed to carry UAV test components, and is also shaped to provide a little additional lift.

I think I'd like one of these for Christmas.

      http://xpda.com/junkmail/junk185/Cobra_UAS_Data_Sheet.pdf

      http://www.raytheon.com/feature/cobra1106

---

Mission Accomplished

In May 1, 2003, President Bush flew to the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln in the copilot seat of a Navy S-3B Viking. I think that was fine. When I'm President I'll fly in all kinds of different planes. Then he gave a speech. In the background was a sign, "Mission Accomplished."

     http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/10/28/mission.accomplished/

The crew of the Abraham Lincoln did accomplish their mission, but the sign seemed to imply (as intended by the White House public relations people) that the war was over. Bush said in his speech " major combat operations in Iraq have ended," and "the tyrant has fallen, and Iraq is free."

People have been harassing Bush about this ever since.

You can see a video of his speech on the White House web site, near the bottom of this page:

      http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/05

But you won't see the "Mission Accomplished" sign. They edited it out! They shifted the video up about 20%, removing the sign and leaving a big black bar across the bottom. I think that's cheating. It's also pretty dumb. They should have just stretched it upward so there wouldn't be a black bar on the bottom.

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-u2ITs4yIAE

---

Water Balloon

      http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8568478827662499191

---

Alaska Dust Storm

Alaska enjoyed its second annual dust storm on the Copper River a couple of weeks ago.

     http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=17452

Four years ago I flew down the Copper River in the Aircam. You can see how it could get a little dusty there from time to time.

                  

I really liked the repairs they made to this bridge.

                  

      http://xpda.com/alaska02/

---

Today's Stupid Patent

Flickr has applied for a patent on "interestingness." It's how to decide whether a picture is interesting. It essentially ranks photos based on keywords and other metadata, traffic, time, etc. I my opinion that's not novel, original, or even noteworthy (except as a stupid patent).

      http://xpda.com/junkmail/junk185/interestingness.htm

"Media objects, such as images or soundtracks, may be ranked according to a new class of metrics known as "interestingness." These rankings may be based at least in part on the quantity of user-entered metadata concerning the media object, the number of users who have assigned metadata to the media object, access patterns related to the media object, and/or a lapse of time related to the media object."

---

1981

It seems like Aids has been around forever, but here's a 1981 headline from the BBC:

      1981: Mystery disease kills homosexuals

     http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates ... _4020000/4020391.stm

---

Pictures of Today!

The Moon.

       http://xpda.com/junkmail/junk185/P1120536.JPG

      http://xpda.com/junkmail/junk185/P1120537.JPG

      

A Colorado farm

      

Sandhill cranes, flying south through Colorado about three weeks ago:

                  

                  

Some Kansas Sandhill Cranes

      

A Kansas Windmill

      

Monument Rocks, Kansas. These are south of Okley or Colby, I forgot which. They're pretty neat.

                  

                  

      

Mud Swallow Nests

            

                  

            

Big FAA Radar:

            

A Wild Horseman:

      

Texas Trees:

      

A Texas Windmill:

      

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