More Junkmail from Bob!

Saturday, April 24, 2004
Important Stuff.

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Tornadic

Thursday I was sitting here on the computer playing the first game of Yahoo chess I'd played in months, and the tornado sirens went off. I told my opponent, "tornado coming, gotta go." Then my baby daughter Melinda (she's 17 now) and I took off in the car in search of tornadoes.

We found 'em! I've lived in Oklahoma all my life, and this was the first tornado I'd ever seen. It wasn't a big one, and it would only stay on the ground a few seconds at a time before it disappeared back into the clouds. Here are some pictures and a 10-second movie:

      http://xpda.com/tornado

I was thinking that there weren't very many idiots driving around near the tornado. Later I found out that my eldest toddler Brian and Mike's middle kid Ken also drove around (separately) and saw some tornadoes in the same storm. They also had never seen one before.

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Sun-n-Fun

Sun-n-Fun is a big fly-in in Lakeland Florida. It's the second biggest in the U.S., behind Oshkosh. 2-3 weeks before the festivities started, I took off in the Aircam toward Lakeland. I used the term "toward" loosely. I went from Oklahoma to Florida by way of Minnesota.

      
     
Three years ago I flew down the creek behind my house and followed it to Pryor Creek, Grand River, Arkansas River, and the Mississippi down to the ocean. This year I flew to the Mississippi and turned left instead of right. I went to the source of the Mississippi, and it was COLD! Actually, I didn't hit the Mississippi until I was up in Iowa, but I did make it to the North end of the river in Minnesota.

Here's the route and a lot of pictures, if you're interested:

      http://xpda.com/lakeland04

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Atlas

I flew by the Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral in the Aircam last week. I asked them if I could make a low pass over the runway used by the space shuttle, but they wouldn't let me. I think they were worried I might be a security threat. I heard they don't let private planes fly over that runway any more. Here's what it looked like three years ago when I was less of a threat:

           

I stopped in Titusville, Florida, near Cape Canaveral.

In the 1950s, the U.S. Air Force or Boeing or Lockheed or Martin Marietta or someone like that built some Atlas Rockets. Their main use was for Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs). Their main target was Russia and the Soviet Union.

John Glenn rode into orbit on top of an Atlas rocket in 1962 and became the first American to orbit the earth. Here's his launch:

      

This Atlas rocket was launched in an attempt to put a space capsule in orbit, in 1961:

           

The autopilot failed, and they exploded the rocket. But before they exploded the rocket, the space capsule (unmanned at the time) was separated and safely parachuted down. If people had been inside they would have survived.

Here's an earlier suborbital launch in 1961:

      

Mercury-Atlas 9 on launch pad 14, Cape Canaveral, 1963:

      

While I was in Titusville, I visited the Kennedy Space Center and saw an Atlas II rocket launch. They put the Superbird-6 communications satellite into geosynchronous orbit somewhere over the Pacific or Asia. It was a night launch and I was 6 miles from the launching pad, so I just saw a bright light going up. Here's a picture of the launch that I didn't take:

      

International Launch Services (ILS) launched the Superbird-6 on an Atlas II rocket. ILS is a joint venture of Lockheed Martin and the Russian Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center. The satellite was delivered to Cape Canaveral in a large Russian cargo plane. The satellite was launched for Space Communications Corp. of Tokyo.

      http://www.ilslaunch.com/newsarchives/newsreleases/rec259/

A total of about 500 Atlas rockets, or launch vehicles, have been launched. In the 1960's, refurbished Atlas rockets were taken from ICBMs and used for space launches. Titan rockets replaced the Atlas rockets on the ICBMs. The last refurbished Atlas from an ICBM was used to launch a weather satellite in 1995.

Now, instead of Atlas rockets pointing nuclear missiles at Russia, Russia is participating in the launches of Atlas rockets and Japan is paying for them. Things change.

Only 2 or 3 more Atlas II, III, or IV's will be launched. Then they'll use the Atlas V or other rockets.

The Atlas II puts out about 450,000 or 500,000 lbs. of thrust. This is in the neighborhood of the thrust produced by 2 Boeing 747s or one of the Space Shuttle's three main engines. In comparison, the Space Shuttle's three main engines and solid rocket boosters put out about 7,000,000 lbs. of thrust...

      
      (The first space shuttle launch)

...close to the 7,500,000 produced by the Saturn V rocket that launched people toward the moon in the Apollo program.

      
      (The first flight to land people on the moon)

The Soviet N-1 moon rocket produced almost 10,000,000 lbs. of thrust, but all four of the unmanned tests failed and then they cancelled the program. It had 30 rocket motors on the first stage.

           

It seems in my mind that the Space Shuttle is eons newer than the Saturn V, but at 23 years old, the Space Shuttle is almost two-thirds the age of the Saturn V, first launched in 1967. Another statistic occurred to me when I was watching an F-15 fly with a P-47 last weekend. The F-15 is more than half the age of the P-47. It seems a lot newer than that.

      

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RC Models

Israel is using hand-launched RC Model Airplanes for surveillance. They are operated remotely and have a range less than 10 miles.

      http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3571261.stm

Boeing has a slightly larger version, the X-45.

               

           

A few days ago they successfully dropped a GPS-guided bomb from the X-45 onto a truck.

      

The X-45 will cost around $15 million when it's finished and tested.

      http://www.boeing.com/news/releases/2004/q2/nr_040418m.html

I saw some cheaper model airplanes at Toledo, on my way to Florida. It's the largest model airplane show in the country. Here are some pictures:

      http://xpda.com/toledo04

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Sudan

I wonder why nobody pays attention to Sudan. Things are worse there than most places in the news.

      http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3549325.stm

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Keystroke Logger

I read a book ("Paranoia"). It was fair. A guy in the book used a keystroke logger. That's a small device you can plug in between the keyboard and computer, and it records all the keystrokes. It's small enough that it's not noticeable. It records a lot of garbage, but you can generally get someone's passwords that way.

I guy named Larry used one of these devices in real life to record keystrokes from the assistant to the VP of Bristol West Insurance Group in Anaheim. He got caught. He claimed he was working for the California Department of Insurance as a whistleblower, but they said he wasn't.

Larry was indicted on federal wiretapping charges. And all along I thought the Patriot Act legalized wiretapping.

      http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=18401663

Bush is demanding that the temporary powers in the Patriot Act be made permanent, or at least extended. Strange. I think I read that this would happen when they passed the first Patriot Act.

      http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,63109,00.html

...and you can look forward to expanded internet tapping by the federal government:

      http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1107_2-5194394.html

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LottaStuff

There's a web site called http://LottaStuff.com where they sell what some people might call junk. 75-year-old Harold Chapman buys stuff at auctions and resells it. He lives in a motor home at a warehouse where all the stuff is.

Friday morning, Harold got out of bed and was headed for the bathroom when someone pounded on the door. He answered it, and someone stuck a gun in his face. He thought they were terrorists, but it just turned out to be 200 law enforcement officers looking for weapons and explosives.

They spent the day searching Harold's warehouse and some semi-trailers on the property. They took some documents and five people, but they returned the people. The police called the EPA when they found some chemicals, but the EPA said everything was OK.

Nobody was arrested, but Harold claims they did a million dollars worth of damage when they broke through dozens of warehouse and semi-trailer doors. I think he might be fudging a little bit, but I hope they pay him back for the things they broke.

It's a good thing we have the Patriot Act, or they might never have known about Harold. Actually, Harold said an acquaintance with a grudge might have called the FBI and told them Harold had some ground-to-air missiles.

      http://www.trivalleyherald.com/Stories/0,1413,86~10669~2092318,00.html

There was a lot of national news coverage on this, but then the story kind of fizzled. The news stories would say things like "It is not known whether any missiles or weapons of mass destruction have been recovered from the suspected weapons stockpile." There weren't many follow-up articles explaining that there was nothing found. I suspect a lot of people in the country believe there were terrorist missiles found in that raid.

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Gunslinging

Indiana Congressman John was flying to Washington out of Louisville International Airport last Tuesday. He was detained by airport security for a little while. It seems he had a loaded 9mm pistol in his briefcase that he was carrying onto the plane. John said, "So what? There was nothing in the chamber, and the safety was on." Or maybe he said something different, like "Oops." They asked him a few questions and then let him on the plane when they decided he wasn't a threat. I'm not sure whether he got to keep the gun.

      http://www.thelouisvillechannel.com/politics/3023396/detail.html

      http://www.wishtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=1803277&nav=0Ra7MTZZ

I wonder what they'd do to me if I tried to carry a loaded pistol onto an airliner? A few weeks ago the TSA announced that they were going to start cracking down on people who try to board planes with guns, hand grenades, and cuticle scissors. The fine for scissors is $250, and carrying a gun through security will cost you $10,000. TSA Spokesman Mark said "'I forgot I had the gun in the bag' is not an acceptable excuse." Unless, of course, you're important like John.

      http://www.cnn.com/2004/TRAVEL/02/18/air.passenger.fines.ap

Last Wednesday in Orlando, the TSA refused to let a 35-year-old lady named Athena get on her flight. She wasn't carrying anything funny, she just looked funny. She had cancer treatment, lost weight and lost hair, and they said she didn't look like her passport and driver license photos. They would not let her on the plane.

The TSA in Washington was very understanding. They told Athena to get a new photograph. I think she'd have better luck if she ran for Congress. The TSA also said it must have been the private security guards who refused to let her on the plane, because the TSA doesn't do things like that.

      http://us.cnn.com/2004/TRAVEL/04/22/cancer.patient.flight.ap/index.html

I noticed this on the TSA web site (October, 2002):

"Acting Under Secretary of Transportation for Security Adm. James M. Loy announced that the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) will deploy federal screeners today to Key West International Airport (EYW) Key West FL. This brings the total number of airports with federal screeners to 272."

Immediately underneath:

"Acting Under Secretary of Transportation for Security Adm. James M. Loy announced that the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) will deploy federal screeners today to Kodiak State Airport (ADQ) Kodiak AK. This brings the total number of airports with federal screeners to 272."

      http://www.tsa.gov/public/mdisplay?theme=44&monthyear=102002

Those guys don't count very well, either.

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Long Distance Scam

Want to make some money? Write a program that hangs up a modem and reconnects to the internet through a 900 number (or a number with a similar toll arrangement) in a foreign country that's amenable to internet scams. Sao Tome, for example. Sao Tome is a small island country off the West Coast of Africa. A variation on this theme is to have your program just to change the phone number to your dial-up internet service, rather than reconnecting while you're online.

Then, put your program up on a web page and send out some spam directing people to your program. A few of them will load and run your program, and they'll be reconnected to the internet through Sao Tome, on your 900 number, and you'll get some of the money they owe on their phone bill. If they pay.

Last month a guy from La Crosse, WI got a phone bill for over $1100. He got it knocked down to $300 or so. The bills for about $7.50 per minute for phone calls to Sao Tome.

      http://www.lacrossetribune.com/articles/2004/03/25/news/03newspop.txt

When you get one of those pop-ups on a web page that ask if you want to install and run something, remember you're loading a program that will be able to access your computer if you click "Yes."

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Temporary Flight Restriction

On my Aircam trip to Florida via Minnesota, I kept getting close to President Bush. I got to Oshkosh, WI shortly after the airport opened (Bush had been in Appleton, WI). Then I followed him into Huntington, WV, and I bypassed the Charleston restricted area on the way down the coast. I didn't get too close.

And you don't have to be very close to be too close. Everywhere Bush goes, he comes with more than 3,700 square miles of restricted airspace. How much is that? It's 4 times larger than the country of Sao Tome. It's over 40% larger than Los Angeles or Chicago's O'Hare's controlled airspace. And that's only the lateral limits. O'Hare and LAX airspace go up to 10,000 feet and in most places do not extend down to the surface. Bush's airspace goes from the surface up to 18,000 feet over the entire 3,700 square miles.

Some days are an exception. Yesterday the restricted areas in Florida were double with more than 7,400 square miles, because they cover both Coral Gables and Naples.

Needless to say, Bush's campaigning closes down a lot of private airports. Of course, since regularly scheduled passenger and cargo flights could never pose a threat, those are not affected by the restrictions.

Here are the easy-to-read rules for yesterday in Naples.



This essentially says that for private planes, you cannot fly in the small 10 and 12 mile rings period. You can fly inside the 30-mile ring only if air traffic control allows it (you don't know for sure until you get there), and you have to be on a flight plan with a transponder code and stay in radio contact. I think they generally allow people to go inside the 30-mile ring (avoiding the 10 or 12 mile rings) to land and takeoff, but they generally don't allow people to fly through the area otherwise.

In my opinion this is a little excessive, especially when you consider that large planes are generally allowed to fly through these areas and small planes are generally not.

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Fingerprints

Visitors to the U.S. from Andorra, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brunei, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, San Marino, Singapore, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom now have to be fingerprinted and photographed before they can enter the U.S. 

This was announced by the Department of Homeland Security on the day after April Fool's Day. I guess we should expect those countries to respond in kind. Maybe DNA samples and subdermal RFIDs would be more effective. The RFIDs would have the additional advantage of speeding up those slow lines at customs and immigration.

      http://wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,62926,00.html

RFIDs are the small chips being used to track inventory in stores. Some privacy fans think they'll be used to track people after they've left the stores.

      http://wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,62922,00.html

The TSA may start using RFIDs on airline boarding passes. That would be OK with me.

      http://www.computerworld.com/securitytopics/security/privacy/story/0,10801,91830,00.html

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Stupid Software Patents

Here's a good article on the state of the patent.

      http://wired.com/news/business/0,1367,62930,00.html

There was a demonstration against software patents in Brussels a few days ago.

      http://demo.ffii.org/brussels.php

Microsoft's FAT format patent is being contested, successfully I hope.

      http://www.pubpat.org/Microsoft_517_Reexam.htm

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EuroTunneler

Need to dig a hole? You too can own a Eurotunnel drill!

      http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3599191.stm

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Man on Mars

This is one of my favorite pictures from Mars. I don't know what it's for, probably some students.

      

The Mars rover Opportunity found a rock on mars NASA called Bounce, because it probably bounced over to where it is when an asteroid hit a few miles away. It spectral analysis matches some meteorites found on earth called shergottites.

They thought shergottites came from Mars because gas bubbles inside them match the Martian atmosphere. They probably dropped in to Earth when an asteroid hit Mars hard enough to bounce a bunch of rocks away faster than the Martian escape velocity. The analysis of Bounce supports this theory.

Here's bounce:

      

Details:

      http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20040416-041840-4139r

Some recent pictures from Mars:

      http://xpda.com/mars

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Mad Creekstone Cows

The US Department of Agriculture is refusing to allow Creekstone Farms to test all its cattle for Mad Cow Disease. Japan and some other countries refuse to allow untested cattle to be imported. Creekstone Farms is willing to pay for it. But the USDA won't allow it. I'm not sure what the USDA's reasoning behind this is, but since they control the sale and distribution of the Mad Cow tests, Creekstone can't test its cows. It seems pretty strange to me.

      http://www.creekstonefarmspremiumbeef.com/BSEtesting.html

      http://www.meatnews.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Article&artNum=7308

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Stretching History

The U.S. Forest Service has a publicity campaign going to encourage logging to thin out dense forests and help prevent major forest fires. I don't know anything about forest management and I don't know whether this is a good idea, like the USFS says, or if it's something to get campaign contributions from the timber industry, like the Democrats say.

      http://xpda.com/junkmail/junk155/protecting.pdf

The USFS brochure about thinning forests in the Sierras shows a photo of a forest in 1909, then 5 more photos in 1948, 1958, 1968, 1979, and 1989 (page 3 of the pdf file above). This illustrates the increasing forest density. However, the brochure doesn't mention that the 1909 photo was taken shortly after the forest was logged, or that the pictures are of a forest in Montana and not the Sierras.

      

Here's an html version of the brochure online. They've put a tooltip with an explanation on the Montana photos -- hold the mouse pointer over the photos and you can see it.

      http://www.fs.fed.us/r5/forestsfuture/brochures/challenge.htm

Here's the AP article:

      http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4722630/

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Nielson Ratings

The Nielson Ratings have finally gotten automated. Nielson has had a monopoly on TV ratings measurement for about 50 years. Until recently, volunteers filled out forms showing what programs they watched when, and mailed in their TV diaries once a week.

Nielson finally decided to automate the process, and installed "people meters" in 800 test households to automatically log what shows are being watched by who in the house, and for how long. This is supposed to provide more accurate and timely results.

But the people meters have caused a big uproar. Tests from the people meters show very different results from the old diary method -- up to 62% -- in TV programs with primarily minority casts. According to the people meters, a lot fewer people are watching those shows than Nielson has been reporting. This has a lot of people riled up, from advertisers to producers to minority organizations. It will be interesting to see whether Nielson changes the statistics to fit the politics.

      http://wired.com/news/business/0,1367,63080,00.html

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Earthlink Spyware Audit

Earthlink claims to have discovered an average of 28 spyware programs on each computer it scanned during the first three months of this year. I claim they're wrong. The spyware scan comes up with several false positives on my computers. I don't doubt that many or most people have some sort of spyware, but Earthlink is stretching it a bit.

      http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3633167.stm

      http://www.earthlink.net/spyaudit/press/

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Time to Climb

Bruce Bohannon flew the Exxon Flyin' Tiger last Saturday at the Sun-n-Fun fly-in at Lakeland. The Flyin' Tiger is a highly modified RV-4 homebuilt kit with a 380 hp Mattituck engine. He flew the plane up to 9000 meters in 9 minutes and 51 seconds, a world record for climb speed in a piston powered airplane. That's an average of 2784 feet per minute to 27,432 feet.

Here's the plane three days before the record-setting flight:

           

That's not Bruce Bohannon, but he apparently did a good job fixing whatever he was working on. The plane has set 25 records so far.

      http://www.avweb.com/newswire/10_17a/briefs/187132-1.html

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Customs Income

Eight years ago my brother Mike and I were caught in what I consider a U.S. Customs scam. I crossed the border from Canada to the U.S. and Monticello, Maine. The border station was supposed to be open at that time, according to the sign there, but nobody was around. We knocked on the door and everything. 25 miles later, someone from the Border Patrol stopped us and told us to follow him to another Customs office. We did. They charged us $500, which they said was a big break from the $6,000 regular price. I thought it would be a good idea to let them seize the car like they were threatening, since it's Mike's, but my computer was inside it and I was afraid they'd take it too.

      http://rwebster.com/customs.htm

The Canadians apparently called the U.S. Border Patrol, who followed us until they decided we weren't going to a Customs office 30 miles away. We called lots of people and visited with the regional customs officials, who did an investigation. I thought that they had stopped this sort of stuff. I guess they started again.

A guy named Richard was fined $10,000 in February for crossing the border into Maine, coming home from church like he does (or did) every week.

      http://www.bangornews.com/editorialnews/article.cfm/ID/416841

      http://www.bangornews.com/editorialnews/articles/418738_031104residentsirkedabou_rrice.cfm

It was worse for Michel in Escourt, Maine, a metropolis of 4 people. Michel was arrested last year and charged with a bunch of stuff. He was threatened with years in jail and hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines. He spent 35 days in jail before all the charges but one were dropped, and the sentence was the 35 days in jail he had already served.

His Crime? Michel lives 30 yards from the border, right next to the Customs office. He drove to Canada to get some gas just like he'd been doing for 40 years. He happened to have a shotgun in has trunk that he used for hunting.

      http://www.seacoastonline.com/2003news/02162003/maine/13264.htm

      http://www.injusticebusters.com/2003/Jalbert_Michel.html

It sounds like something you hear about in third-world countries.

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Bridge Crashes

South of Apalachicola, Florida, there's a long bridge that goes across the bay to St. George Island. They just built a new one and are dismantling the old one. Here's a picture I took of them last week:

      

Before they dismantled the old bridge, they decided to take an old barge and ram the old bridge. They put 150 sensors on the bridge to see where the weak spots are, and started crashing the barge into the bridge at speeds up to 6 mph (or maybe 9 knots.)

      http://www.eng.ufl.edu/home/pubs/news/2004/bargeBridge.html

A couple of years ago a barge ran into the I-40 bridge across the Arkansas River. 14 people were killed, and the bridge was broken.

                 

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Don't Feed the Animals

In Tampa, you can't even feed the people! Some people were arrested for sharing food without a permit. I think they were having a big picnic in the park to feed some homeless people, who some affectionately refer to as bums.

      http://tampatrib.com/floridametronews/MGA9Z5O28TD.html

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Spamming for Hire

Want to make some money? Sign up with Sendmails Corp., load their VirtualMDA software, and start sending spam. They promise you a dollar for every hour your computer spends spewing out spam. They don't mention that your ISP is likely to shut off your internet service after a day or two of this.

      http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,63146,00.html

You are apparently safe from prosecution under the Can-Spam act, since nobody (as far as I've been able to find out) has been charged under that law, even though it's been in effect now for close to 5 months.

But pay some politicians campaign expenses like the RIAA does and you can get action. U.S. Federal and international agents conducted 120 searches in 27 states and 10 countries, seizing 200 computers in a 24-hour period. No arrests were announced, which seems a little strange to me. I get a little skeptical when I read about police seizing property without making arrests.

      http://wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,63178,00.html

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Diebold

Diebold makes voting machines. They and their competitor both claim that a program to count votes is a highly technical trade secret, so nobody can see their source code. Diebold's software was certified by the state of California. But then Diebold changed versions before the last election. The new version was not certified.

Diebold said, "Trust us."

California said, "We have to, it's too late to change before the next election." Well, some people in California say that they should get rid of the Diebold voting machines because Diebold blatantly broke the law, but I'm guessing Diebold is in for good.

      http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,63179,00.html

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Great White Shark

Off the coast of New Zealand, a great white shark attacked a fishing boat smaller than the shark. The boat got away.

      http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,9364428%255E1702,00.html

[ I originally had "In  Australia" here, but that was wrong. ]

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Buried Jets

The maintenance manuals for Mig and Soyuz fighters recommend that you do not bury the planes in the sand. About 30 were dug up in Iraq last summer. I think they were buried years earlier, but I'm not sure. Here are 14 pictures of the jets:

      http://xpda.com/junkmail/junk155/buriedJets.htm

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Hurricane!

Before this year, there have been only two tropical cyclones noted in the South Atlantic, and never a hurricane. But last month a hurricane formed in the South Atlantic and hit Brazil, in the state of Caterina. They called it Hurricane Caterina, in fact. Here's want it looked like from above:

           

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Pictures of Today!

Here is a killdeer pretending to be wounded. They do this to lead you away from their nests.

           

Moonrise over the Atlantic:

      

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