Guns, Cars, and Tech

Blog

  • I’ve been predicting this for years

    Starting about 3 years ago, I started saying that we were very close (5 years or less) to having cell phones so powerful that they will be able to replace laptops and desktops.

    The scenario would be that you’d sit down at your desk and plop your phone on a cradle. That cradle would be attached to a monitor, keyboard, mouse, and other peripherals…much like laptop docks today.

    That day is here.

    It’ll still be a few years before this becomes widespread–and a few years after that before Apple revolutionizes the industry by finally adopting it–but this is a great first step.

    It’s going to be 18 months before I can get a new phone, but I’ll be willing to bet that by then most phones will have this capability.

  • Meanwhile in Texas

    According to Sec. 46.035 of the Texas Penal Code, it’s illegal for someone with a concealed carry license to carry in a church.

    A North Texas congregation is reeling after an attacker rammed a car into a church wall, chased the pastor, and beat him to death with an electric guitar.

    Well, at least it wasn’t a gun, right?

    ETA: Reuben points out that I didn’t read far enough down in the Texas Penal Code. Church Carry has been allowed since 2007.

  • And now for something a little lighter…

    Was at a fairly major department store yesterday buying a few items, and had this conversation:

    cashier #1: Do you have a [store] card you’d like to use?

    me: nope

    cashier #1: would you like one?  It will save you %15!

    me: If it’s a credit card, I’m not interested.*

    cashier #1: Ok, think about.  It’s a good deal.

    me: I don’t use credit cards.

    cashier #1: You don’t use credit cards? [looks puzzled at other cashier]

    cashier #2: Don’t look at me.  I don’t use credit cards either!

     

    *you never know.  Target now hands out cards that tie directly to your debit card and gives you the same discount as their credit cards.

     

  • hmmm… let’s see…

    According to the Washington Post, “Obama campaigned four years ago on a promise to revamp the federal government’s disaster response functions…” and has already signed off on 9 declarations of emergency in the north east before the Hurricane Sally has even hit the shore…

    You know what I’m reminded of?  When Nashville had a 1000 year flood event, was pretty much under water (and was literally about a inch away from losing all clean drinking water), and Obama waited until 2 days *after* it stopped raining to sign off on a state of emergency declaration.  At that point, we had pretty much already given up on the feds and started trying to pick ourselves up.

    Maybe it’s the region of the country?  Maybe it’s because it’s an election year?  Maybe it’s because we didn’t wait for a hand out before trying to salvage what we could?

    I’m not saying that the folks in the path of a Cat2 hurricane are not in for a nasty ride, they are.  I’ve already seen reports of a tree falling on a coworker’s neighbor’s house, and a trampoline hung on the power lines.  Although, I’m pretty sure that Naienko’s sister (who grew up near the coast in North Carolina) is having a hurricane party at her place in DC right now.

    Oh, and Wizard has said something about northerners needing to shut up because people down here freak out over a little ice on the road.

  • Gone and done it

    Last week I ordered the same scope that Linoge used to make rifleman. Should be here tomorrow.

    It’ll be Spring before I can even think about doing another Appleseed, and hopefully the rumors about having one less than a mile from my house are true–that’ll make it a lot easier for me.

    I’d still rather use a 10/22 than the M&P15-22, but I don’t see myself buying another rifle anytime soon (I’m still waiting on the ATF for my 762 Phantom suppressor and York Arms to get back to me about my .300blk upper). The M&P15-22 was purchased as a trainer clone of my Rock River AR and I’d like to keep it that way.

    But that’s the great thing about ARs: it doesn’t take much to switch the rifle’s purpose.

  • That DVD on your shelf? Yeah… you don’t own that.

    To me, and many other folks, owning something means that I can do what I want with it.  If I go to the store and buy a DVD, I should be able to take it home, and watch it on any of my devices that have a DVD drive in them right?

    Nope.  At least not legally.

    Ever since the DMCA passed, a group from the federal government gets together every couple years to agree upon what is an isn’t a breach of the DMCA.  They’ve once again decided that jail breaking/rooting your phone is permissible, but oddly enough not tablets that are essentially the same thing except bigger.  Also, apparently modifying your gaming console?  Also illegal.  Which, oddly enough, means that the DoD is in violation of the DMCA for buying a boat load of PS3’s and using them for cluster computing.

    Oh, and those DVDs that I mentioned?  Yeah… you can only watch those on approved devices with approved software.  If you were unaware, most DVDs that come from Hollywood are actually encrypted (CSS encryption).  Of course, this encryption was broken years ago by people that wanted to watch their DVDs on non-approved players, but it’s still encryption.

    This becomes important to me because most of the computers in my household are running Linux on them.  There is no Hollywood approved player for Linux out there.  The reason?  because that would cost money.  There’s a paid license attached to every encrypted DVD, DVD player, and commercial copy of DVD playback software that goes to the owner of the encryption scheme (the DVD CCA).

    So… just to be clear, I were to:

    Buy a legal copy of… say… the Avangers, a bit of my purchase goes to the DVD CCA

    I pop it in to the DVD-ROM in one of my Linux computers that came with a Windows only DVD playback program (so, a little of that purchase went to the DVD CCA).

    I use one of the handful of free DVD playback programs for Linux to watch my *legal copy* of the movie.

    I’m breaking the law, and am an evil, evil pirate.

    Oh, and those nifty new Blu-Ray discs?  Just as bad, if not worse.

    One of the definitions of ownership is being able to do what you want with the item.  Legally speaking, I am not allowed to consume DVDs and Blu-Ray discs in the fashion that I desire, therefor I can not say that I own them.

    Oh, and by the way, those commercials and PSAs that you can’t skip through on DVDs?  Yeah… using non-authorized software means that you can.  Doing the illegal thing is actually a better user experience than walking the straight and narrow and you have coughed up the money to the right people.

    *EDIT – Corrected the typo pointed out by Chris Byrne*

  • Deal Alert: Hosting

    HostGator is 40% off today for all plans.

    I moved from self-hosted on an error-prone hamster-powered nettop to Hostgator back in January. Couldn’t be happier. I’ve got the “Baby Croc” package and host about a million domains. Kidding, of course, but that’s what it feels like sometimes.

    Please note that if you sign up using that link, I do make a commission.

  • Huh… advertising must work!

    Went to the range yesterday to try out the 795 after the upgrade and check the zero on the new scope.  I decided to take the Marlin Papoose with me to check on its zero as well.  I’ll write about the 795 in a different post.

    I’ve noticed I’ve gotten a lot of questions about the Papoose since it magically transformed from a Browning Buckmark to its current state.  Probably the biggest question?

    “Is that one of those new Ruger 10/22 take downs?”

    most of these folks had no idea that Marlin started making a take down back in the 80’s, but by god, they’d seen the Ruger 10/22 take down ads plastered everywhere.

    Gee… I guess advertising really does work… who knew?

    Of course… folks these days seem to assume that all .22 rifles are 10/22s, but…

  • My tenuous connection to Steve Jobs

    As I’ve mentioned before, I listen to audio books while running or walking the dog. I’m currently listening to Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson. I’m no fan of Apple or Jobs (Wozniak is another thing entirely), but I feel it’s important to understand one of the most influential minds marketers of the last 200 years.

    He was a hypocrite and a sociopath, but there’s no denying he changed the world.

    Anyway, today they covered the brief involvement of Ron Wayne in Apple Computer. The short story is that Ron went into a partnership with the Steves, but FREAKED OUT when Jobs started going around borrowing tons of money. Eleven days after forming Apple, he sold his shares back to the Steves for $2300.

    In 2010, his shares would have been worth $2.4 Billion.

    Which brings me to my tenuous connection to Steve Jobs. In 1998, I worked in a video rental store. The assistant manager was a woman in her early- to mid-twenties, if I recall correctly. The iMac had just been released, and another coworker and I were talking about it. This woman piped up and told us that her estranged father had briefly been involved in Apple, and was “basically the laughing stock of the computer world” for selling out because he was afraid of going bankrupt again.

    I have no idea if her claim is true (Ron Wayne is gay, and I can’t find anything online to indicate he has children), but she wasn’t they type of person who I would have expected to know Wanye’s story in such detail.

    So, two degrees of separation between me and Steve Jobs.

  • Bleg: Printer/Scanner

    The Brother laser printer I bought 12 years ago no longer works. Well, that’s not entirely accurate.

    The Brother laser printer I bought 12 years ago doesn’t have drivers that work with anything after Windows XP, and I no longer have any machines running Windows XP.

    This presents me with an opportunity. You see, I discovered this site about real-world disaster preparedness sometime in 2006, and I’m a big fan of the idea that you should scan everything. Data space is cheap, so why not?

    Well, this leads to rather large piles of documents to be scanned. For a while, I had a flat-bed scanner–but that was tedious and it, too, is no longer supported.

    What I want is a sort of scaled-down version of this. We have those at work, and they’re awesome. I want something that is network-enabled (wired or wireless, I don’t care either way), and has duplex scanning and printing, with a document feeder for the scanner, and costs less than a 10/22. I thought this guy would work for me, but then I started reading the reviews for it.

    My use case is that I’d drop the giant stack of papers my insurance company sends me* in the document feeder, hit a button, and a PDF magically appears on my server. That’s why the duplex scanning bit is important: I get lots of double-sided documents I need to scan.

    So, anybody got one?

    *I get these things electronically when possible, but even then it’s a pain to go to 37 different websites to get all the documents that regularly come to my physical mailbox.