Titled:   IAEA commissioner falls into water tank at Czech nuclear plant

A US commissioner from the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) emerged unharmed after falling into a water tank at the Dukovany nuclear power plant on Friday.

The daily Mlada fronta Dnes reported Friday that commissioners training at the facility were moving around the plant in a group. One of them, however, left the group and fell into the tank. The water in the tank was not radioactive.

And these are the guys we are supposed to listen to on Iran, North Korea and other hot-spots...

Titled:   Gun 'Microstamping' Bill Passes California Senate

The California Senate on Thursday passed a bill that would require the "microstamping" of semi-automatic handguns -- giving cartridges fired from those guns a unique imprint, which according to gun control advocates, would help police solve crimes.

Supporters say microstamping would turn spent cartridges into potential evidence in civil and criminal cases. According the California Million Mom March, "when the police retrieve the bullet casing at a crime scene, they can quickly track down the legal owner of the handgun that fired it."

Nonsense, say Second Amendment supporters, who view the bill as yet another attempt to burden gun manufacturers and further restrict gun sales in the state. They say that gun makers, faced with the added expense of microstamping semiautomatic weapons, would either stop selling their wares in California or drastically raise prices.

The bill (AB 352) would "expand the definition of unsafe handgun to include semiautomatic pistols that are not designed and equipped with a microscopic array of characters, that identify the make, model, and serial number of the pistol, etched into the interior surface or internal working parts of the pistol, and which are transferred by imprinting on each cartridge case when the firearm is fired."

Watch the revolver become the "weapon of choice" among street gangs in CA.

But the California NRA Members' Councils says the microstamping would create false evidence trails.

"Micro-stamped cartridge cases fired and abandoned at government agencies facilities or private shooting ranges could be gathered and used to 'seed' crime scenes with the with 'evidence,' implicating law enforcement officers and citizens" in crimes they had nothing to do with, the group said in an analysis on its website.

The gun-rights group also said microstamped cartridges could not be recycled because they might implicate secondary users of reloaded cartridges. "Millions of pounds of metals will be turned into scrap and require expense disposal requirements imposed so it will not enter landfills."

And without the ability to sell and recycle used (microstamped) cartridge cases, the cost of firearms training will increase for government agencies, the gun rights group added.

Second Amendment supporters also note that microstamps can be easily defeated by replacing parts of the handgun that have been stamped; polishing the microstamp with abrasives or modifying the stamp; and in some cases, the stamped markings may be filled in with residue produced by normal firing of the gun.

Titled:   Brits break speed record

A BRITISH team has broken the land speed record for diesel-powered engines.

The JCB Dieselmax team averaged a speed of 328.767 mph, officials confirmed.

The team jetted out to Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah to undertake their feat yesterday afternoon. 

The car, driven by Wing Commander Andy Green, was powered by a version of the same engine used in JCB diggers.

The team beat the previous record of 235mph which has stood for more than 30 years.

In 1997, Green became the fastest man in the world when he drove ThrustSSC through the sound barrier to a speed of 763.035mph.

It's good to hear someone still has some character over there...

Titled:   LPG conversion costs jump as motorists scramble for rebate

The Australian government decided to subsidize LPG conversions for motorists. Hours later, the costs of converting to LPG mysteriously rose almost as much as the subsidy:

The cost of converting a car to LPG soared by hundreds of dollars in just a few hours yesterday as WA motorists rushed to take advantage of windfall government subsidies.

Gas conversion specialists across WA were flooded with inquiries from motorists who were keen to book their cars in and claim the $3000 in State and Federal government payments.

The increased demand drove prices up about $200 to $2800 at most businesses, with the RAC claiming some installers were quoting a staggering $4850.

A survey by The West Australian showed many installers appeared to have simply taken their phones off the hook, while others let them ring out. One installer’s answering machine message told callers he had stopped answering the phone because he could not get any work done.

The RAC was forced to bring in extra staff after a 600 per cent surge in calls to the motoring group’s advice line — which included claims that installers had refused to deal with new inquiries until January.

“We would certainly be watching out for any profiteering that might occur,” RAC manager vehicle policy Mike Upton said. “We wouldn’t want that to happen, there’s no reason for it.

Another example of unintended consequences proving just how bad the idea was in the first place.

Hat-tip to Samizdata

An Irish technology firm issued a challenge to the world's scientific community on Friday to give its verdict on technology it says smashes one of the basic laws of physics by producing "free energy."

Dublin-based Steorn said it had placed an advertisement in The Economist magazine seeking 12 top physicists to examine the technology -- based on the interaction of magnetic fields -- and publish their results.

...

"We put in a small amount of mechanical energy and we get a large amount out ... but until this thing is validated by science we won't be doing anything commercial with it," he said.

Titled:   Hybrids might make you feel good, but why?

The well-respected auto research firm, CNW Marketing in Brandon, Ore., recently found after a two-year study collecting data on the ''energy necessary to plan, build, sell, drive and dispose'' of the cars, that the hybrids don't stack up well.

CNW found that hybrids use more total energy in their lifetime than their gasoline-powered cousins. Even a Hummer, the ultimate bane of the environmentalist world -- uses less total energy over its lifetime than any hybrid (including the halo special, the Prius), Car and Driver magazine said.

Maybe that is one of the reasons for the recent poor showing of hybrid sales:

Despite all the hype and the recent spike in gas prices, sales of hybrids have dropped every month this year compared to the same month last year. So much that manufacturers like Ford are backing away from earlier politically motivated commitments to produce so many of them...

Oh, the pressure to look like you're doing good!

It reminds me of the time that everything had to be printed on recycled paper to "Save the Trees". Recycled paper takes more energy, produces more pollution during the re-pulping and bleaching stages of production, consumes more water and even results in less trees being planted.

And don't even get me started on polystyrene cups, which turn out to have a lower environmental impact than any other type of beverage container, yet are frequently vilified as man's worst enemy.

When you want to "make a difference", whether for the children or otherwise, please do your homework first so you actually make positive impact rather than help destroy what you were planning to save in the first place.

Titled:   You Really Need to Stop Using Google

We Swear brings us an interesting angle on Google.

Not content to censor the Chinese population, they also seem to have a bias against right-of-center sites in their main search engine, either in News, Search or both:

As it turns out, the mega search engine Google has been taken over by the left and any key words that someone there deems “hate speech” results in that piece disappearing.
...
Google has become the single largest private corporate underwriter of MoveOn. According to sources in the Democrat National Committee, MoveOn has received more than $1 million from Google and its lobbyists in Washington...

Even the Washington Times has written about the story:

As Newsbusters reports, in March 2005, Rusty Shackleford, who runs the conservative blog the Jawa Report, received an e-mail message from Google informing him that: "Upon recent review, we've found that your site contains hate speech, and we will no longer be including it in Google News." A year later, Jim Sesi, who runs the conservative MichNews.com, received a similar e-mail from Google: "We have received numerous reports about hate content on your site, and after reviewing these reports, decided to remove your site from Google news." Two weeks ago, Frank Salvato, who runs the conservative New Media Journal, also heard from Google that his site was being removed, again because of "hate content."
    Aside from each of these three sites being largely conservative in outlook, the offending material cited by Google were articles criticizing radical Islam and Islamists. Upon review, the articles contain language no more -- in some cases far less -- inflammatory than the numerous Muslim Web sites a user can find when searching Google News. So, at least on the surface, it's reasonable to assume that it is Muslims who are complaining to Google, which then chooses to avoid further criticism by simply expelling the sites.

Michelle Malkin weighs in with an example of clear bias:

Actual headline featured in Google News' top U.S. stories section:

Gonzales confirmed: war criminal to head US Justice Department

Google is happy to allow Uruknet.info, an Iraqi resistance propaganda outlet, to appear at the top of the News section, but won't add respectable sites from the right?

Newsbusters points out the make-up of the staff at Google:

In the case of Google, there is some evidence that its employees lean strongly to the left. According to a February 2005 USA Today article on the subject: “As it claws for greater power, the Democratic Party has found a newly rich ally in one of the fastest-growing U.S. companies: Google.” The article stated that of the over $200,000 Google employees gave to federal candidates in 2004, “98% went to Democrats, the biggest share among top tech donors.” And, with a largely successful public stock offering making “scores of millionaires among [Google’s] 3,000 workers,” “Democrats now have a potentially potent source of cash as they fight to retake the White House and Congress.”

With over 49% of the searches in the US made though Google, maybe it's time to move to another engine.

Fair and balanced indeed!

Titled:    Smart gun' shows promise - and promises controversy

As police in Philadelphia struggle to stop a scourge of shootings, some New Jersey engineers say they are closing in on a "smart" solution: a gun that can be fired only by its owner.

The prototype, developed at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark, has pressure sensors embedded in the gun handle that recognize a person's unique grip.

The team says a commercial model is up to five years away, but if it works, it will trigger a singular - and controversial - state law. Within three years, all handguns sold in New Jersey would have to be personalized, with this or some other recognition technology.

...

Various smart-gun efforts have flamed out in the past, amid vocal skepticism by the National Rifle Association. Many gun owners chafe at the notion of any restrictions on their Second Amendment right to bear arms, and warn that any such modifications would make guns more expensive.

Gun-control advocates, meanwhile, are split, with some warning that personalized firearms would give owners a false sense of security.

...

Once the shooter squeezes the trigger, the grip sensors spring into action, recording the pressure for one-tenth of a second. In that moment, the pressure applied by each finger varies enough that engineers can distinguish between shooters with a high degree of reliability. A grip's signature does not vary significantly from firing to firing, even in stressful situations, researchers have found.

A year and a half ago, a prototype recognized authorized users nine out of 10 times. Now, the rate lies between 95 and 99 percent, said Michael Cody, a computer science engineer on the team.

At the very least, the technology would cut down on violence committed with the 500,000 handguns that are stolen each year, said Stephen Teret, public health professor at Johns Hopkins University. "If all those guns had been personalized guns," Teret said, "they would be useless when they were stolen."

What the news article doesn't mention is that most of this violence is the result of street gangs, drug gangs, et al. Frankly, I wouldn't worry about the 28,000 legally licensed citizens concealed-carrying. I'd be more concerned about the thousands of criminals who haven't bothered (and never will) obtaining a permit. They're the ones commiting mayhem. Bust-up the mutant gangs, throw them in jail, and watch the violence decrease. Don't start leaving the haplass honest folk defenseless.

Titled:   Car Powered By Water A Reality

Along Florida's Gulf Coast, water is everywhere. From the bay to the beach to the town of Clearwater, that is where we found Denny Klein. A man driven by water, literally.

Klein has invented the world's first water powered car. It runs on what he calls "Aquygen." Aquygen is water or H₂O, broken down and turned into HHO gas, something scientists once thought impossible.

"Any PhD or library, they say you can't mix hydrogen and oxygen. And still to this day we get a lot of people who don't believe us because that's what they were taught," Klein said.

But people are quickly learning Klein and his car are for real.

Klein says his design will retrofit any piston engine.

An economic development team from the county and local government TV got a demonstration while we were there.

Klein says he initially developed Aquygen to create a safer, less polluting blowtorch. Klein realized Aquygen would clean up car emissions as well. The only thing that would come out of the tailpipe was water.

Soon, his vision became a reality.

Like most alternative fuel cars, the prototype is actually a hybrid. It runs on a gas and Aquygen mixture. Whenever you're ready, you flip the switch and the Aquygen kicks in.

The result is up to a 50 percent jump in gas mileage. Klein's Ford Escort prototype gets 384 miles on a tank of gas. 576 miles with a little Aquygen mixed in.

Hmmm.. All those years of Chemistry, covalent bonding, memorizing s, p & d orbitals, molecular behaviour under stimulation and I never once heard of HHO.

OK - I can see using waste energy, from the cooling system or exhaust system being used to do useful work (such as in a turbo) which could possibly take water and do something to it that would make combustion more efficient. Water injection used to be used to increase cylinder pressure in WW2 fighters - it's almost uncompressible. And even in modern cars, EGR valves introduce lower temp exhaust gases straight into the combustion system to keep down temperatures to improve emissions.

So I can believe that maybe the introduction of "free" steam may give an added efficiency of the engine.

But Aquygen? HHO?

Maybe I'm one of the scientists / chemists that still thinks this is impossible.

Chance of success in engine efficiency improvement ~ 25%

Chance of Aquygen being real <1%

Titled: Fare comment!

The BBC apologised, saying the mistake occurred because the man was wearing Mr Kewney's name tag. Mr Kewney said: "Everyone seems to think he was a taxi driver waiting in reception to take me home. But no one knows for sure."

He added: "There were several surprising things about 'my' interview. Judging by my performance, English wasn't my first language and I didn't seem to know much about Apple, online music or The Beatles." He said the taxi driver "seemed as baffled as I felt".

Last night, the driver's identity remained a mystery. None of the taxi firms regularly used by the BBC would admit to employing him.

Titled: Spy Agency Watching Americans From Space

WASHINGTON (AP) - A little-known spy agency that analyzes imagery taken from the skies has been spending significantly more time watching U.S. soil.

Titled:   NSA kept domestic calls data: report

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The agency in charge of a domestic spying program has been secretly collecting phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, including calls made within the United States, USA Today reported on Thursday.

It said the National Security Agency has been building up the database using records provided by three major phone companies -- AT&T Inc., Verizon Communications Inc. and BellSouth Corp. -- but that the program "does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations."

USA Today said its sources for the story were "people with direct knowledge of the arrangement," but it did not give their names or describe their affiliation.

The existence of an NSA eavesdropping program launched after the September 11 attacks was revealed in December.

Defending the controversial program, President Bush and his administration officials have said it aims to uncover links between international terrorists and their domestic collaborators and only targets communications between a person inside the United States and a person overseas.

But USA Today said that calls originating and terminating within the United States have not escaped the NSA's attention.

"It's the largest database ever assembled in the world," the paper quoted one source as saying. The agency's goal is "to create a database of every call ever made" within U.S. borders, it said the source added.

The NSA has "access to records of billions of domestic calls," USA Today said. Although customers' names and addresses are not being handed over, "the phone numbers the NSA collects can easily be cross-checked with other databases to obtain that information," it said.

Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, who headed the NSA from 1999 to 2005 and was nominated by Bush on Monday as director of the CIA, would have overseen the call-tracking program, the paper said.

Hayden, as well as NSA and White House officials, declined to discuss the program, USA Today said.

Among major U.S. telecommunications companies, only Qwest Communications International Inc. has refused to help the NSA program, the paper said.

Qwest, with 14 million customers in the Western United States, was "uneasy about the legal implications of handing over customer information to the government without warrants," USA Today said.

It said the three companies cooperating with the NSA "provide local and wireless phone service to more than 200 million customers."

So they know which numbers you call, when and where. And the data is kept and analyzed. Of course we all guessed this was happening - it's just strange to see it talked about in the press. I had an expectation of privacy on my calls, at least expecting the records to be lost in the masses of data. But if they record every single one...

Titled:   Multi-Culti Madness Goes Extraterrestrial

Malaysia (a country that has declared attending Friday prayer sessions mandatory) is getting ready to send a Muslim astronaut into space as part of an International Space Station mission in 2007. This poses quite the religious quandary.

Muslims are required to pray five times daily, turning toward Mecca during prayer. But as Zainal Abidin Abdul Rashid of Malaysia National University pointed out ..., the space station circles the Earth 16 times in 24 hours, with a sunrise and sunset occurring about every 90 minutes. "Does this mean we have to perform 80 prayers a day?" he said. ... On the issue of "qiblat" or the direction of Mecca, suggestions range from installing a special rotating seat so that the Muslim astronaut could turn easily toward Mecca, to using a calculator that can determine qiblat direction and the prayer schedule. Then there is also the question of how to perform ablution, a ritual cleansing of the body, with water-rationing in space. Also, how does one do the prayer ritual of kneeling and prostrating under zero gravity?

The physicist in me ponders the maths involved in calculating the position of Mecca on a rotating globe while in orbit, and the tracking of it during prayer. The rotating chair would have to revolve in 3 axes to avoid ending up facing away from it by the end of prayer time. Assuming that an orbit directly over Mecca is unlikely, there will quite a bot of spinning involved. Quite an image - a whirling dervish of prayer, flailing arms and legs...

The realist in me asks why anyone would think to do this at all, selecting instead an astronaut whose religious duties do not involve the re-engineering of the shuttle.

Hat-tip to Nobody's Business

Titled:     Greenpeace takes Kennedy to task

But Ted Kennedy? Sure enough, the activist group known for its flair for drama hammers the liberal Bay State senator - and Cape Wind opponent - in new ads being shown in states nationwide in the days leading up to a congressional vote that could doom the Nantucket Sound wind farm.

In the 30-second spot, a cartoon Kennedy looms over the water like a Japanese movie monster, pounding wind turbines as they sprout from the water, and barks, ''I might see them from my mansion on the Cape.''

Titled:   Cloned dog celebrates first birthday in S.Korea

The world's first and only cloned dog celebrated its first birthday on Monday, as the leader of the South Korean team that produced the Afghan hound faced a criminal investigation for possible fraud and ethics violations.

The team led by scientist Hwang Woo-suk unveiled the dog named Snuppy last August amid global fanfare. Time magazine named Snuppy one of the most amazing inventions for 2005.

The birthday celebrations at the university where Hwang once ran his lab were subdued. Snuppy, short for Seoul National University puppy, is in good health and weighs about 64 lbs, university officials said.

For his birthday, Snuppy enjoyed two of his favorite foods; ice cream and sausages.

How about that - a story from Korea of a dog actually being fed, not eaten.

Happy Birthday Snuppy.

Titled:      Human guinea pig 'in coma for a year'

As we read of things going wrong on another medical trial, it is time to consider the methods and motives behind the use of human volunteers for medical testing. Drug development is a costly and time-consuming affair and this is often used as a defense for the cost of drugs when they reach the consumer.

Pharma spend many years sifting through existing compounds and creating new chemicals to search for likely candidates. This is followed by lab testing and further study to weed out the most promising candidates. The next step is usually animal testing, which is conducted under great secrecy and security and finally human trials. These come in two flavors: firstly, tests to see which level of dose is safe to administer, which is done by giving increasingly higher doses to healthy volunteers until adverse side effects are seen. Secondly, it is given to those volunteers with the targeted disease or condition, to see how effective a cure or treatment it is.

With increasing pressure to reduce animal testing and political moves to reduce the costs of drugs, it is more likely, not less, that drugs will be tested on humans earlier in the process than traditionally done, despite careful oversight.

In this case everything looked great up until the time human dose testing began:

"Now we're being told that Ryan might be in this coma for six to 12 months. He can't even breathe on his own."

Yesterday it was reported his head had ballooned immediately after being given the drug and his limbs turned purple.

The previously healthy men had volunteered to test a drug designed to treat rheumatoid arthritis, leukaemia and multiple sclerosis.

Dr Suntharalingam, clinical director of intensive care, said: "There is an inflammatory process going on that seems to have been triggered by something."

I would guess that "something" that caused his head to balloon and body to turn purple would be closely linked to the administration of an experimental drug?

We need more treatments, we need more volunteers and we need the best testing procedures available to make sure drugs are safe and effective.

Putting undue pressure on drug companies is not going to make it any easier.

Titled:   When all else fails, crack down on the law-abiding folks

Wizbang brings us news of micro-stamping of ammo rearing its ugly head again. This time it's Boston's turn to penalize the law-abiding and avoid doing anything sensible to crack down on crime.

When problems refuse to be solved by the old methods, new ones are often required. Politicians need to look at new, novel approaches that might curb the crisis.

Unfortunately, the leaders in Boston can't quite grasp that. Instead, they are "stuck on stupid" and returning to variations on the classic liberal themes: don't single out the bad guys, blame everyone.

So, to keep criminals from shooting people, they're cracking down on those who buy bullets.

Their ideas so far are rather visionary, such as requiring guns to "micro-stamp" their serial numbers on the shell casings they fire. Other notions are restricting how much ammunition someone can buy at once and recording who buys bullets.

The irony is, there is a simple solution to their problem, one readily visible just across the border here in New Hampshire: it's called "punishing the guilty." We don't believe in punishing everyone just because a few act irresponsibly; we make examples of them, partly to encourage others to not follow their lead.

He references Boston.com News:

Police and city officials acknowledge that criminals could buy ammunition on the black market and out of state, but they say they have noticed an apparent shortage of ammunition on the streets. They also say that youths, who are both suspects and victims in many shootings, might be deterred if ammunition is more difficult to get.

I guess in the theoretical world of idealism, in which these folk live, it could really work, as long as you ignore criminal activity, ammunition theft, casings left at gun ranges, filing down of parts, reloading, black markets, insanity and the existing 300 million firearms floating around the country. 

It would certainly increase the market for revolvers, which leave no casings behind anyway.

Titled:   Facial Armor Rears Its Ugly Head

DefenseTech.org is featuring a new tool to help protect our guys from injury.

The mask weighs 1.3 pounds, is compatible with ballistic eyewear, and will stop a bullet from a .44 magnum.

If you want to see video of it stopping that bullet, click here.

I'm not sure if it will help win the hearts and minds of the natives.

Titled:   Glue gun will mean police can stick to fleeing drivers

The Times Online tells us of a new plan that will enable LA police to avoid chasing and catching criminals. The concept is to shoot a trackable GPS unit at the fleeing driver's car so that they can find it later. Assuming that word of this will spread around the criminal community, especially after the press coverage, this means that crimes that risk a police chase have now got much safer for the criminals.

“Rather than pushing them because they are going 70-80 mph and we are attempting to keep up with them, we will just basically monitor where they are going,” said William Bratton, the police commissioner.

“Let them run. We will just basically track them to where they dump the car. We do that now with helicopters.”

No more televised chases across town through traffic, ramming, shoot-outs and foot chases. Now the stolen getaway vehicle will be free to roll across town, drop off the crims at a convenient pick-up point near their other vehicles, with the police just having to pull up later and tow the original vehicle away.

“Banning pursuit is probably a good idea if all you care about is public safety, because if you ban pursuit there won’t be any chases or any risk to the public,” said Geoff Alpert, the head of the criminology department at the University of South Carolina, who has endorsed the new technology.

Way to go, LA! 

“This is incredible technology,” said Commissioner Bratton. “We are going to test it out. We are really optimistic that this may be one of the next big ideas in American policing.”

It will keep police in jobs forever, simply by letting criminals go free each time, free to steal another car and escape over and over. And the police will win too! Their record for recovery of stolen cars will skyrocket. Pity about their record of captured thieves.

Titled:   PC CPU Price vs Performance

Random Fate brings us news of an eight-round contest between Intel and AMD's new dual core processors. Satisfy your inner geek and read the rest of the CNET review.

The result is unanimous.

Titled:     Tiananmen

Titled:   Iris Scanning For New Jersey Grade School

Iris scans have become part of everyday life at a New Jersey school. Everyone that wants to enter the school has to provide a drivers license for initial registration and submit to a scan:

When a parent arrives to pick up their child at one of three grade schools in the Freehold Borough School District, they'll need to look into a camera that will take a digital image of their iris. That photo will establish positive identification to gain entrance into the school.

Funding for the project, more than $369,000, was made possibly by a school safety grant through the National Institute of Justice, a research branch of the U.S. Department of Justice. "The idea is to improve school safety for the children," said Phil Meara, superintendent, Freehold Borough School District, on Monday. "We had a swipe-card system that operated the doors, but the technology was obsolete."

It seems crazy to install such an expensive, high-tech system for such a low tech purpose. If you wanted to gain access to the school to do harm, you would expect a criminal just to walk in with someone who is registered on the system, probably at knife or gun-point. The security system wouldn't know any different. And it would probably stop external responders from coming to the rescue too.

Wouldn't it just be easier to issue RFID keytags? Or are they obsolete too? Or an armed guard?

Titled:      Michigan officials view anti-terror driver's license law as costly to taxpayers

 DETROIT - Newly obtained documents reveal that Michigan state officials are concerned that federal legislation called the Real ID Act will require extensive changes to existing practices at the Secretary of State Office, will be extremely difficult to implement by the Act's deadline and will carry heavy expenses that will have to be absorbed by Michigan taxpayers and license applicants. 

The Act, passed by Congress last spring, imposes federal regulations on the design, issuance and management of state driver's licenses - turning them, for all practical purposes, into federal identity papers. 

“Civil liberties groups, conservative groups, immigration groups - we've all been saying that Real ID will be a real disaster and needs to be revisited by Congress,” said Kary Moss, ACLU of Michigan executive director. 

“These documents indicate that Michigan officials - the people actually responsible for carrying out this ill-conceived law - also have serious problems with Real ID.”

The documents are part of a national survey of state motor vehicle officials' views and preparation for complying with Real ID that was conducted by the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators (AAMVA).

What does Real ID mean for you?

Nothing at all unless you want to travel on an airplane, open a bank account, collect Social Security payments, or take advantage of nearly any government service.

Is this a national ID card? News.com answers:

It depends on whom you ask. Barry Steinhardt, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's technology and liberty program, says: "It's going to result in everyone, from the 7-Eleven store to the bank and airlines, demanding to see the ID card. They're going to scan it in. They're going to have all the data on it from the front of the card...It's going to be not just a national ID card but a national database."

At the moment, state driver's licenses aren't easy for bars, banks, airlines and so on to swipe through card readers because they're not uniform; some may have barcodes but no magnetic stripes, for instance, and some may lack both. Steinhardt predicts the federalized IDs will be a gold mine for government agencies and marketers. Also, he notes that the Supreme Court ruled last year that police can demand to see ID from law-abiding U.S. citizens.

Titled:    Stem cell experts seek rabbit-human embryo

British scientists are seeking permission to create hybrid embryos in the lab by fusing human cells with rabbit eggs. If granted consent, the team will use the embryos to produce stem cells that carry genetic defects, in the hope that studying them will help understand the complex mechanisms behind incurable human diseases.

Titled:    Councilor: Make handguns with GPS tracking chip

Via Wizbang comes a story of a crazy gun-grabbing councilor, so bent on gun control that he wants gun manufacturers to include GPS tracking devices in every new firearm. Mentioning Boston’s adoption of GPS-enabled school buses and snowplows as an example, his call ignores the reality of criminally-held firearms. Apart from almost doubling the weight, I can't imagine an entirely tamper-proof GPS system surviving for more than a few minutes. Even leaving it sitting around for a few days until the batteries are flat would work around that one.

The original story from the Boston Herald quotes:

The city councilor picked Smith & Wesson because it’s a Massachusetts-based company. “I’m calling on them to step up to the plate,” he said. The company has yet to respond.

Sure, if they want to lose a large portion of their customers. The police add to the rosy picture:

As for the GPS idea, police said they “support any type of gun control.”

Wouldn't it be cheaper just to force manufacturers to paint each firearm pink, and have it play "Kumbaya" over and over?

Do you use the Firefox browser? If so you may want to check out Fire Tune. Its a free application that will optimize your browser for you. I didn't try the before and after test so I can't verify any difference it may have made.  

If, like me, you find yourself with a pre release Windows XP x64 ISO file and you are not sure what to do with it. Here is a step by step guide for burning that image to a CD and then installing it onto your hard drive.

I installed XP x64 last night without incident. Plug and play managed to correctly identity and install drivers for all my devices. I did have to download the Radeon beta drivers for x64 before I was able to run Doom3. The ATI setup program quits before the drivers install correctly but you can manually install them by browsing to the location they were extracted to. I haven’t really had a chance to install many applications yet but the ones that I have all seem to work fine.

I believe the final release is due sometime in April. I have also heard that Microsoft is going to allow registered users of XP to download it for free. I haven’t been able to confirm that from any source other then from the guy at the local computer shop though. I’ll let you know.

Say Uncle outed me a couple of days ago. My first reaction was that I better get some content posted to earn his recommendation. And that is what I intended to do. But then I bought one of these

And one of these

That's right. 64 bit. I haven't done any extensive testing on it yet but so far it seems wicked fast. I am actually a little surprised on how fast 32 bit XP seems to work with it. Especially when you consider in clock speeds I went from a 2500+ to a 3000+ which is not that big of a jump. In the past I have made much bigger jumps without hardly any noticeable difference in performance. I know those numbers don't represent actual clock speeds but they are the only numbers I have at the moment.

Anyway I have to go create another partition for 64 bit XP and install all my applications. I'll be back later with new (some) content. See you then.

Titled: Scientists slam US plasma weapon

Scientists have reacted angrily to the revelation that the US military is funding development of a weapon intended to deliver an "excrutiating bout of pain" from over a mile away. The "Pulsed Energy Projectile" (PEP) device "fires a laser pulse that generates a burst of expanding plasma when it hits something solid", the New Scientist explains. If you happen to be that something solid, then you get temporarily incapacitated without suffering permanent injury.

People are mad at our military? I've never heard of such a thing. When did this start happening. PEP sounds like a great military weapon. You can incapacitate an enemy with the option not to kill them. I know that in most cases we would rather our enemies be dead then incapacitated but what about in crowd situations where you can not so easily separate the good guys from the bad guys? It makes great sense for that situation as well as many others I can think of.

That's the theory, but pain reasearchers fear that the proposed riot control weapon could be used for torture, and further doubt a solid ethical basis for the research. Andrew Rice, a consultant in pain medicine at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in London, said: "Even if the use of temporary severe pain can be justified as a restraining measure, which I do not believe it can, the long-term physical and psychological effects are unknown."

Ok I will grant them that we don't know the long-term psychological effects but can we agree that the lasting effects would probably remain better then being dead? No. Well there is just no pleasing some people.

I have heard there is a picture of this weapon somewhere but I haven't found it yet. I'll post it when I do.