Tim Berners-Lee: demand your data from Google and Facebook

There is no doubt that there is a lot of information about us out there on the Internet. From the gated communities of iTunes and Facebook to the Wild West of Google et al., sites are looking at what you do while you’re there, what you look at, what you look for, how long you stay, sometimes even where you came from and where you go when you leave among other things. They have our likes, dislikes, lists of wishes, and in some cases lists of what we already have (like GameStop asking what games you already possess) are desired as well.

Other companies have so much information on us, but strangely we don’t actually have the same comprehensive information on ourselves. It’s becoming easier to request this information, but data from one place rarely synchronizes with data from another place. Companies that are not affiliated with each other have different ways of doing the same thing and — like OS-whatever and Windows-whatever — don’t really like playing with each other. And if program incompatibilities weren’t enough, it doesn’t seem — to me at least — to be in the best interests of the companies that have information on us to make it clearly readable to us. Perhaps it’s an effort to make requesting our information tedious or, more likely, they don’t want us to use the information they spent time gathering somewhere they won’t reap benefits.

Berners-Lee, the British born MIT professor who invented the web three decades ago, says that while there has been an explosion of public data made available in recent years, individuals have not yet understood the value to them of the personal data held about them by different web companies.

In an interview with the Guardian, Berners-Lee said: “My computer has a great understanding of my state of fitness, of the things I’m eating, of the places I’m at. My phone understands from being in my pocket how much exercise I’ve been getting and how many stairs I’ve been walking up and so on.” Read more…

Yes, there are many discreet sensors collecting, correlating, and communicating data about us all the time. Not too long ago, we had to jump through hoops to opt-out of Internet hoovering…now  (for the most part anyway) a simple click can usually allow us to avoid any more collection from one specific place. The downside to the simple opt-out seems to be that if we should mistakenly not opt-out when we first have the chance then we do have to jump through some hoops to do so later.

I personally think it’s a good idea to have our data; we should have a comprehensive electronic pattern of who we are. This electronic DNA (e-DNA) could help us with a lot of things in cyberspace and meatspace as well. Of course, we would need two major breakthroughs to make e-DNA work: first, we need a standard format to which the information must adhere and second, we need a secure way to share what we want, with whom we want, when we want to do it. We cannot simply give our e-DNA to a company and expect them to use only what they actually need to fulfill our requests; companies now collect far more information about us than is needed. Think of this: why do companies request our birthdays to verify our ages? Is it that kids are so poor at math today that they will automatically type in their real birthdays other than a date which satisfies the requirements? No, I believe that the intent is to get information on you that they can then cross reference with information they got from an affiliate. The more information they get on you, the better they can advertise to you.

The day is coming when all our information from credit history and medical records to Internet search patterns/data storage and friends/family will be contained within one data silo. There will be multiple copies of this silo but, unlike true meatspace copies, our data silos will be linked together and when one is updated they all will be updated. The only real problem is how to make it work. Either there will have to be a master data repository (or repositories) which houses our silos, or we will have to have some pretty sophisticated computers physically located within our homes that house our silos. The master data silos will either be government, or be accessible to government…both a little unnerving. The home servers, to give us the warm fuzzies, would have to be able to run something like IBM Watson to keep access to our data on need-to-know status at all times and actively discourage hacking attempts, but they would alleviate the concern that one giant company (or the government) has all our data…for a little while. As I have said many times, anything let out on the web once is out there forever; there is no sure-fire way of erasing every instance of a particular piece of data. There is presently nothing to keep companies from copying the data you have given them permission to view except their word…and words can be manipulated to say literally anything.

Tupac Shakur resurrected as ultra-realistic “hologram” for live performance

WARNING!! Video is NSFW!

Wow. When I first saw Star Wars (what is now referred to as Star Wars: A New Hope) two things really stuck with me: the Millennium Falcon, and the holographic projection of Princess Leia asking for help. I knew it was nonsense since in order for us to see it we either have to be looking directly into the beam, or it’s reflecting off of something. That knowledge in no way lessened the cool factor of the image; I had seen holograms before and knew that color holograms were not too far off. I also realized that since Obi-Wan and Luke were sitting in one place while the recording played that the 3D effect could be mimicked by a sophisticated computer system (R2-D2) which only had to create the effect for a very narrow viewing angle. There was still the problem of making an image coalesce in plain air, though…but hey, they were far more advanced than we were at the time — even though it was a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.

Princess Leia was a recording; later in the series, we were introduced to the holographic projection of the Emperor actually speaking to Darth Vader. I didn’t see why something like that would be worth the processing overhead instead of simply using a screen, but once again it was cool to see. There wasn’t a lot of interaction with the hologram other than subservience, but there was interaction.

If I remember correctly, it really wasn’t until Attack of the Clones (officially Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones)  that the usefulness of a hologram over that of a flat screen became evident. Attack is where they showed the hexapod (octopod?) mobile hologram emitters that could walk with someone and allow a conversation as if the person was actually present. We do have those rounding robots with the flat screen heads, but how much more awesome would seeing a hologram that had some depth to it be? Could you imagine a young Star Trek fan in the hospital having their physician show up as an Emergency Medical Hologram in a Starfleet uniform? Perhaps a Harry Potter fan could have their physician show up dressed as Dumbledore (0r even Snape)?

The amazing realism of the projection has already reignited the rumors of Tupac still being alive (nevermind the fact that he hasn’t aged a day, he’s a bit see-through, and his feet noticeably slide all over the stage like he’s on an ice rink). AV Concepts has also stated that the technology could be used to digitally revive almost any deceased performer, from Michael Jackson to Freddie Mercury, though there is quite a bit of debate over whether this should become a regular practice. Read more…

Of course, the performance wasn’t really “live”. However, even though there’s still a ways to go it was very impressive. As long as the screen can remain hidden, your suspension of disbelief can easily be achieved. I wonder how far they will go with this though. CGI is rapidly approaching the point of visual reality…remember the T-Rex from Jurassic Park? That was in 1993 — almost 20 years ago. Now, we have CGI crowds (Titanic?) that move well enough for us to pretty much accept them as living beings behaving the way living beings would under the circumstances.

I gather that, depending on whether or not they can get permission to do so, there will be more digitally resurrected people in our future. Perhaps they could have an artist sing a duet with themselves or even have an entire choir of themselves. Making an artist perform one of their songs is no doubt a challenge, but the (public) personality of the artist is already contained within the recording. What would happen if they wanted to resurrect someone for whom we don’t have any recordings like George Washington or Abraham Lincoln? As we are well aware, that first impression is crucial; how imposing would Darth Vader have been if he had been voiced by Justin Beiber?

There is one other thing I think would be a perfect but somewhat creepy match: this technology with a version of IBM Watson. Of course, Watson would have to acquire as much information on the person to be resurrected as possible, but knowing everything about one thing should be far easier than knowing a lot about everything…and not being able to look anything up on the Internet. Actually being able to use the Internet, or to call a reference colleague in real time would transform teaching. Imagine physics class getting a visit from Sir Isaac Newton or hearing about the Civil War in history class from Abraham Lincoln…how much more interesting would those classes be?

How big a security risk is Java? Can you really quit using it?

There was once a time when the OS of a home computer was actually housed on a ROM (Read Only Memory) or PROM (Programmable Read Only Memory) chip physically located on the motherboard. Needless to say, boot up was nearly instantaneous but making improvements or bug fixes to the OS was a bear at the very least. With a ROM you had to replace the chip…period. With some of the later iterations like the EEPROM (Electronically Erasable Programmable Read Only Memory) you could erase and reprogram the chip while it was still in the circuit. It was still a bear…but much less of a bear than needing to procure a new chip.

These old systems typically had proprietary programming code to go along with them. A program written for one manufacturer (Activision) would not work on another (Commodore) because the OS was intimately attached to the hardware; you did not buy a computer and then choose an OS to put on it. That is not to say that there weren’t tinkerers; it’s just that tinkerers were locked to a platform and tinkering was strictly limited to languages used by the system (BASIC, COBOL, FORTRAN, etc.). The only way to mess with the OS was to burn your own chip.

The modern version of a home computer is rather different. There are basically only two types of  home computer: those that use Apple hardware and those that use something else. However, due to the need to make updates and patch holes the new version of the OS is all software; it is no longer “set in silicon” as it used to be. (The exceptions of course are companies using read only thumb drives as re-installation media.)

As there are significant functional differences between iOS, MacOS, Windows, Linux, etc. it was rather difficult to write a program that would run on all of them without writing it separately for each of them. What was needed was a standard language that they all understood regardless of their internal configuration; a language that was powerful and flexible. Java fit this bill. As long as the virtual machine for each OS was up to date, code written in pure Java would run. Initially this was a good thing as the OS with the largest reach was coming under attack; rewriting code to target only the other OS flavors would have left a significant portion of the population out of the loop. Everyone watched as the OS under siege weathered the storm; the other OS flavors tightened ranks (or pointed fingers) and secretly reveled in the knowledge that they weren’t the ones under the withering barrage. They forgot one thing in their relief: while they could seek and plug vulnerabilities in their own code, they were forbidden to do the same for code that had permission to run on their systems but was not created by them.

That’s the problem with exploits that target vulnerabilities in cross-platform runtimes like Flash Player and the Java Runtime Engine (JRE). Even if your operating system is fully up to date, an unpatched vulnerability in that third-party code can lead to havoc.

As the Mac community discovered, a user can go to a perfectly legitimate site, be infected with absolutely no warning, and have untrusted code running on the box. That infection typically includes a component that can download additional malware later, also without warning. Read more…

Imagine three pets: Spot, Rover, and Ruffy. Spot is a Great Dane who has a real doghouse in a shady part of the lawn; Ruffy is a friendly but agoraphobic housecat who cannot go outside; Rover is a Jack Russel Terrier who plays with both. One day, Spot gets fleas. The next day, Ruffy has fleas. How does Ruffy get fleas if she never goes out? Simple. She got them from cuddling with Rover after he spent time with Spot…at least, that’s what their owners thought. As it turns out, the veterinarian informed them that the fleas their pets had were not indigenous to the area…and the timeline of the infection indicated that Spot was infected second. Their Patient Zero was Rover, who roamed the neighborhood playing with the neighborhood kids.

Since Rover was very friendly, he approached anyone willing to scratch him behind the ear…especially those nice people in the white coats who would give him dog treats at the same time every day and brush his fur with the funny brush with the tube on it.

An easy way to fix the problem is to lock Rover up…but then the neighborhood kids come to your house to play with him thus crowding your house. You could be mean and tell the kids not to come around but then very few people in the neighborhood would be willing to help you. There is also the possibility of trusting Rover to someone…but then they can teach him all sorts of bad habits. If only you knew where he got the fleas in the first place, but since he can’t talk and the tracker you had on him didn’t take pictures…

Is Java a risk? Yes. Is surfing the web a risk if you avoid the seedy places? Yes. If you have your OS fully patched and your antivirus up to date and you avoid the seedy places is surfing the web still a risk? Yes. You could disable Java…but you could also disable images to make your browser faster. That may make things a little… monochromatic?

This is one of those annoying decisions where the pros and cons are specific to you. Chances are that whatever needs Java to be enabled will be the most likely vector so turning it off probably doesn’t afford any protection other than the perception of protection. Having heard about being hit by lightning you can stay indoors whenever you hear thunder…but remember that the first strike will hit without warning since light is so much faster than sound.

New Mac malware epidemic exploits weaknesses in Apple ecosystem

I must admit to a little confusion: many Mac users (and seemingly Apple itself) do not consider a Mac to be a PC, which IMHO stands for Personal Computer. It seems that for many, only a Wintel box is a PC and a Mac is…a Mac. Therefore, if you want to be safe from viruses and malware and trojans and whatever, you need to get a Mac rather than a PC, right?

Umm, wrong.

What makes this outbreak especially chilling is that the owners of infected Macs didn’t have to fall for social engineering, give away their administrative password, or do something stupid. All they had to do was visit a web page using a Mac that had a current version of Java installed. Read more…

There is a common misconception that an OS can actually be inherently immune to viruses; that a virus can only attack one kind of system. IMHO this is a fallacy, and a very dangerous one.

What many don’t seem to understand is that vulnerabilities are not actually “holes” in an OS; they are not open gateways that hackers find and enter. Vulnerabilities are basically certain situations which, if exploited, can compromise a system. Granted, some problems can be attributed to sloppy coding, but others are unusual situations that usually wouldn’t crop up without a very peculiar set of circumstances. For instance, consider your house keys; with them, your home and all of your possessions are vulnerable to theft or destruction. If a thief got your house keys, you’d be toast, right? Well, is your address conveniently stamped on your keys? Is whether or not you have an electronic home monitoring system also stamped on them? Is the code for the system stamped on them too? Is the fact that you have a vigilant neighborhood watch in effect located with your keys? With enough information, having your house keys equals loss of your stuff. With enough information any security can be defeated…the question is whether or not making the effort to defeat the security is worth it.

Checking for vulnerabilities is not cut-and-dry. The numbers of lines of code for a modern OS runs into at least the tens of millions. If you have four numbers — I mean 0, 1, 2, 3 — there are 3,334 different numerical combinations you can make. Add just one more number, and you can make 4,445 different combinations. You might think that for a computer that is not too many numbers and you’d be correct. However, we aren’t talking about simple numbers…we’re talking about lines of code which have to be executed before they can be summed with the results of other processes to see if there is a problem. It would be great to be able to make code bulletproof but to do so requires more lines of code, which means more processing, which means more CPU overhead, which means bloat…and we all know what that means. Generally, then, the OS is stress tested under abnormal conditions and passed if it succeeds. It sounds bad but “perfect” is not required to get software out the door; all they need is “good enough” and it’s good to go.

I say all this to say that Apple has been safe for some time because it just wasn’t worth the effort to find the security holes. Apple’s market share was boutique and not mainstream. This has changed in recent times and now Apple is in a bit of a bind: they need good practices and anti-viral systems but their advertising and their general attitude has been that only PCs were affected by malware. Apple has been marketed as the computer “that just works” so much of the installed user-base is not really computer-savvy because they haven’t had to be. Now they’ll have to catch up with the Wintel users and get used to the bad stuff.

By the way, I’m sure there are many saying “well, what about Linux or Unix?” I have a theory about that. IMHO, most of the viruses and malware are specifically targeted against OSes that force you to conform and pay lots of money for the privilege to use them. Also, it’s far more difficult to sneak something by the millions who write Linux code than the hundreds or maybe thousands who write proprietary OSes. It is also really, really bad to defecate where you eat. I have no proof on that…it’s just a hypothesis.

UK plans to monitor all online comms are “waste of money”

The United Kingdom is already generally regarded as the country with the highest surveillance rate in the world. There are cameras pretty much everywhere (if there are bathroom cameras they are very well hidden and not acknowledged) so people are pretty much used to them. Citizens are not particularly fond of the cameras, but they are tolerated…as a result most of the cameras seem to be obvious.

There are some things to take into account when dealing with surveillance cameras, though. For instance, there is a difference between focal view and field-of-view. While the focal view of a camera might be the register and front door of a specific store, the field-of-view can encompass the walkway in front of the store and even some of the parking lot. It’s just like your eyes: what you focus upon frequently has quite a bit of peripheral information included with it. You may be watching a great movie on the television, but if a DVD under the TV moves seemingly by itself, you will notice it rather easily. Supposedly the UK government is planning to monitor the Internet within its borders and will only pay attention to what it focuses upon and nothing else.

The government said that police and security services need to be able to monitor all online communications “to investigate serious crime and terrorism and to protect the public”.

Monitoring on this scale will require UK internet service providers to install systems to intercept and analyse internet traffic using deep packet inspection (DPI), according to Cambridge University security researcher Dr Richard Clayton.

DPI can be used to monitor everything a person does online, from the web pages they visit to the messages they send to their friends. However the government said it plans to implement systems that will only monitor “communications data”, such as who a person talked to online and when, and not the message content. Read more…

There is an old saying, “The best laid plans often go awry.” There is an even more appropriate saying, “The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.” I can see this starting out as monitoring only “communications data” but I don’t see it ending there. Pretty soon someone in the hierarchy will decide that the information would be a bit more helpful if the “communications data” had a subject attached to it. Then they wouldn’t have to worry about uselessly following Mohammed Abadar who talks only about golf when Mohammed Elbadden always talks about vigorously exothermic reactions. There is, of course, a possibility that Professor Elbadden works at the Energetic Materials Research and Testing Center or perhaps Alford Technologies but without knowing the context of the subject within the communication it would be difficult to know if  Professor Elbadden needs to be flagged. As storage space is pretty cheap now it will most likely only get cheaper in the future so the storage overhead will be negligible. There is also the chance that Barrister John Carter, who communicates from a specific location to the same address at the same time every night could be planning something…or hiding the fact that he has a mistress from his wife. A subject, some context, and perhaps a comparison with previous messages would make classification far more effective…

A little information can go a long way, but more information can go even further…and what government willingly throws away information?

‘Cyberplasm,’ a Micro-Robot Modeled After the Sea Lamprey, Could Swim Around Inside You

The idea of nanotechnology in general fascinates me. The idea of nanotechnology doctors (nanodocs) I find especially fascinating. However, as interesting as I find the idea of robots swimming around inside of me I find the idea of living things swimming around inside me rather…unsettling. Yes, I am well aware that the human body is actually in a symbiotic relationship with several living things (most familiar is probably the Lactobacillus acidophilus) and there is even a theory that our mitochondria are also alien creatures that have been incorporated into our bodies over the eons. I have no quarrel with them. They are benevolent (mostly) and they’re really, really tiny. Even if I had 100 of them in my hand at the same time, I wouldn’t be able to see them. (Malaria and Plague among others are really, really tiny too but they aren’t benevolent…not by a long shot.) This thing is to be much, much larger…on the scale of a centimeter.

Called “Cyberplasm,” this robot would mash up biomimicking robotic components with actual mammalian cells to create robot systems and sensors that respond to stimuli like chemicals and light the way living organisms do. “Eye” and “nose” sensors would be derived from animal cells, while an artificial electronic nervous system will record data from Cyberplasm’s surroundings and respond to external stimuli via artificial muscles that are powered by glucose. Read more…

If it was just a robot the scale would not bother me. What bothers me is that it uses living cells to create the robot parts. Yes, I understand that Nature has had millions of years to perfect systems and that using them would be much more efficient than trying to duplicate them but Nature has a dark side too: mutation.

It is because of mutation that there are no natural diseases that can kill 100 percent of a population. It is likely that even an engineered disease will not have a 100 percent fatality because there will be someone, somewhere who can successfully combat it. Mutation is Nature’s way of saying “I will not be boxed in; I will find a way to survive.” Cases in point are the Zebra Mussels, Silver Carp, and a particularly aggressive form of ornamental aquarium seaweed among others. If you introduce a living organism into a new habitat with no natural predators, the new organism basically goes nuts.

Yes, I know that it is most likely just paranoia speaking and that they will test the hell out of this thing before they allow human trials but I can’t shake the crawly feelings. I can imagine having these things swimming around inside of me, taking care of little problems before they become big ones, and I cut my arm on a piece of glass. Naturally my body’s defenses kick into overdrive to make sure I don’t get infected…and the Cyberplasms respond in kind. Along with my white blood cells and platelets, the Cyberplasms check out the wound and keep the area clean until the platelets can seal the damage. Unlike my white blood cells and platelets however, I can actually see the Cyberplasms moving in the would…looking like little worms. They’ll be moving around of their own volition, but under artificial restraints which will keep them as symbionts. Should life find a way around the restraints, they could very well go from symbionts to parasites…and by the time we realize the change it could be too late.

Law enforcement tools can bypass the iPhone passcode in under two minutes

My parents, and actually some of my friends, have told me of a time when they didn’t lock the front door of the house even when no one was at home. The fact that the nearest streetlight was more than 200ft away from the property also meant nothing; the streetlight was to illuminate the name of the street so a newcomer would know where they were. The light was not intended to banish the shadows. Regardless, an invitation to enter was required to pass a threshold…not a desire to pilfer. A closed door meant just that; entry was forbidden.

In this day and age there are still places where you can leave your door unlocked when you’re not there…but you’re taking a chance. While the people around you in your neighborhood might not want to take advantage of you, transients can come from anywhere and may not have the same inhibitions that proper people do. This is why it’s good to have a front door with at least one key lock; it won’t stop someone determined to get in, but it will stop casual entry. It’s the same with your electronic toys; a weak password is better than no password but the presence of a password does not guarantee safety.

XRY works by first jailbreaking the handset. According to Micro Systemation, no ‘backdoors’ created by Apple used, but instead it makes use of security flaws in the operating system the same way that regular jailbreakers do.

Once the iPhone has been jailbroken, the tool then goes on to ‘brute-force’ the passcode, trying every possible four digit combination until the correct password has been found. Given the limited number of possible combinations for a four-digit passcode — 10,000, ranging from 0000 to 9999 — this doesn’t take long. Read more…

As I said, a weak password is better than no password but the problem with weak passwords is that they can be defeated with enough processing power. Strong passwords require a lot more processing power and/or intimate knowledge of the subject. The main problem with strong passwords is that they tend to be harder to remember…a large number of people will therefore take the default way out and choose from the much narrower but easier-to-remember numeric code. For a casual thief, that’s enough of a lock. For law enforcement, that’s nothing. It’s just like searching your car: they can ask for your permission to poke around, or they can get a warrant and tear your car apart. That fancy, laser-cut key which is unique to your car and the manufacturer means nothing when they really want in.

I wonder about one thing though: if I remember correctly, Apple strongly frowns upon jailbreaking your iPhone…something about “can violate the warranty.” Since all idevices are intimately tied to Apple, I doubt that they will be unaware that your iPhone has been jailbroken. Will law enforcement jailbreaking your iPhone show up differently from you jailbreaking it or will Apple simply condemn you regardless?

A camera that peers around corners

Whoa.

Do you remember the movie Blade Runner? There is a scene where Deckard is looking for clues to the identities of the escaped replicants. He has a scale from some kind of animal and a bunch of photographs from Leon, one of the escaped replicants. He looks through the photos and picks one that seems not to have a real subject. He inserts that photo into some kind of voice-activated scanner and after a bit of tweaking manages to make the scanner look around the corner of a wall that is reflected in a mirror. At first viewing, this seemed to be outrageous but since they had flying cars, gigantic flying billboards, huge buildings, and genetically-engineered, bio-mechanical synthetic lifeforms, it was easy to accept the possibility. Well, like the Star Trek communicator pretty much inspired the mobile phone it looks like the ability to look around corners without actually peeking might be “just around the corner,” pun intended.

The system exploits a device called a femtosecond laser, which emits bursts of light so short that their duration is measured in quadrillionths of a second. To peer into a room that’s outside its line of sight, the system might fire femtosecond bursts of laser light at the wall opposite the doorway.

The light would reflect off the wall and into the room, then bounce around and re-emerge, ultimately striking a detector that can take measurements every few picoseconds, or trillionths of a second. Because the light bursts are so short, the system can gauge how far they’ve traveled by measuring the time it takes them to reach the detector. Read more…

Unlike the super high-res photograph in Blade Runner, the MIT device uses a real-time scene and a laser to see around a corner. That is still awesomely amazing even though it’s just a first step. While it would take serious computing horsepower, I wonder if it could be done without the laser.

Consider that we see mostly reflected light and on occasion, direct light. With Apple pushing the “retina display” all others will follow suit or be relegated to the “value bin.” As people are quickly discovering, there is a big difference between displaying text and displaying images or video. Text can scale and the more resolution the viewing machine has the better the text looks. Images, however, do not scale up very well: a 640 x 480 image scaled to cover a 2048 x 1536 screen would look like…well…excrement. So, high-res images will become the norm which means snapshot cameras will become more sophisticated as well. I’m sure you’ve already dealt with the “You know, I really prefer watching this program in Hi Def rather than standard def…” problem that Hi Def creates. It’s like Internet speed…once you’ve experienced faster access you have little desire to return to slower access. However, stretching a normal def program to fit a Hi Def screen is terrible; it’s very pixelated. So the new, high-res photos will have a lot of information on them that we ordinarily wouldn’t see unless the photos were expanded to their full size. I’d say some kind of compressed data within the white border that the scanner can read. Since I doubt that normal people would have access to that kind of scanner, law enforcement could decode all light beams and vectors contained within the photo and thus, could look around photographed corners.

Yes, I know that the idea is far-fetched, Like I said before, we see reflected light. White is perceived as such because it is a reflection of all colors…true black is the absorption of all colors. However, IMHO we have not yet achieved either true black or true white…it is very difficult to make a laser beam from all colors or no color. Therefore within colored surfaces, even the color we see as white or the absence of color we see as black, there are reflections of objects that we simply cannot perceive…yet.

Holding a gun makes you think others are too, new research shows

How many times has it happened that a suspect, not a known criminal, has been shot for an action that appeared to be the raising of a weapon? I am not a warmonger, but neither am I of the opinion that if handguns are outlawed that everything will be hunky-dory. I firmly believe that making handguns completely illegal will result in only criminals and law enforcement having them. Outlawing handguns will keep law-abiding citizens from getting them…the persons who acquire Mini Uzis, MAC-10s, TEC-9s, Beretta 93Rs, or any of the other hand-held fully-automatic weapons (which are already illegal in the United States) will be unaffected.

A handgun is an unusual thing. On the one hand, it is rather small (usually) and it works by expanding gas behind an even smaller bit of metal; in principle a handgun is like a ping-pong ball gun. On the other hand, expanding gas is what lifts 1 million-pound plus rockets into the air and a paint fleck moving fast enough can cause serious harm. Many times just the appearance of having a handgun is a sufficient threat to defuse a situation; sometimes it fans the situation into a full-blown conflagration. There is a lot of power in holding a handgun: you literally have the power of death in your hand. This knowledge colors your thinking to your surroundings. You know that having a handgun gives you the power to back away or terminate an opponent; therefore a handgun in the hands of an opponent affords them the same choice. You know what you’re thinking in a tense situation, but what are they thinking?

The researchers varied the situation in each experiment — such as having the people in the images sometimes wear ski masks, changing the race of the person in the image or changing the reaction subjects were to have when they perceived the person in the image to hold a gun. Regardless of the situation the observers found themselves in, the study showed that responding with a gun biased observers to report “gun present” more than did responding with a ball. Thus, by virtue of affording the subject the opportunity to use a gun, he or she was more likely to classify objects in a scene as a gun and, as a result, to engage in threat-induced behavior, such as raising a firearm to shoot. Read more…

IMHO, the gun bias is why persons who plan to use handguns for anything other than target shooting need training. Even those going out to hunt need training. You cannot buy a handgun simply because it is legal where you are and expect to be able to use it properly. If you go out into Kodiak bear (think big Grizzly bear) country with a 9-mm pistol for protection you had best be an exemplary shot if you confront one…otherwise there is a good chance that you won’t be coming back in one piece. You must be trained to recognize the signals of danger or you will walk into them unprepared. Without training you might think that it’s better to shoot the bear snuffling on the ground 100 ft in front of you instead of backing away slowly. If you don’t appear threatening, the bear would most likely let you go; shooting the bear will cause it pain and then you will have an ineffective weapon in trembling hands with a very pissed-off bear coming straight at you.

The urban environment, even though the opponents are most likely going to be humans, is actually less comprehensible than the wild. Humans can be notoriously aggressive, especially when they feel threatened. Humans can also be crazy stupid or just plain stupid. Humans can also have “brain farts” in very tense situations. Even though common sense (and a cop screaming at them) tells them to drop the black water pistol they have in their hand, some might reflexively clutch what they know to be a water pistol and try to lift it above their head…with unfortunate consequences.

Having a handgun in your hand and knowing that you have the power of ending someone’s life makes you far more wary of someone else having the power to similarly end yours. IMHO this is a reflexive response arising from the survival instinct: if you can do something to someone else, then not preparing for someone else to do the same to you will result in them doing it to you…since you won’t be expecting it. Like the old saying goes “Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.” But if you can get a gun then that person over there can get a gun too…

Semi-automatic pistol fires two bullets at once

I found this while looking for something else and actually sputtered to a dead stop. I actually paused for about 30 seconds while my brain tried to decide whether or not I was going to watch the video. Part of me thought it was a joke but since it isn’t yet April I was at a loss to explain just what I was seeing.

In case you didn’t see the movie The Green Hornet, the main antagonist had what I thought was the most ridiculously over-the-top weapon for a bad guy I had ever seen: a double Desert Eagle. This was not two Desert Eagles welded together but a purpose-built, double weapon. In the film, the weapon was scary but in the real world it would not have worked: the two barrels were being fed from a single clip socketed between the two barrels. I shudder to even think of how complex the feed mechanism would have to be to alternately feed two barrels that are mounted rigidly…this weapon could actually splay the barrels a bit. Anyway, the weapon would have been incredibly cumbersome but like a .50-cal Desert Eagle would have been very unnerving to have pointed at oneself. You could probably have made each barrel a single shot and it would still have had a big pucker factor due to the size of the bullets but there would have been only two shots…then Arsenal Firearms came around.

In honor of the legendary Colt 1911-A1, weapons manufacturer Arsenal Firearms has unveiled the AF2011-AF Double Barrel Pistol, the world’s first double-barrel semi-automatic handgun that fires two bullets at once. While the casing, parts and overall exterior has the look and feel of a Colt, the pistol features modifications such as twin barrel design that enable users to load as many as eight .45 caliber rounds (16 bullets). It’s essentially akin to melding a pair of the classic handguns together. Read more…

I have one question.

Why?

While I’m not a “pry it from my cold, dead fingers” type of person I’m not a “handguns are only good for criminal acts” type person either. I don’t hunt, but I do enjoy target shooting. However, I’m still not sure if this is a joke. If you have never fired a .45-cal handgun then it is difficult to explain just how powerful the recoil actually is. Since force = mass * acceleration and the bullet mass is less than half-an-ounce (~ 200 grains) the acceleration is fierce…and it is transmitted directly into your hands. If you don’t hold the weapon properly, it could actually jump out of your hands or pivot your elbows to the point where it could smack you in the nose…and this is a normal, single barrel weapon I’m talking about. I am not a small guy but the 1911 is about as big as I can comfortably hold and fire; a .45-cal slug is just shy of half-an-inch in diameter but the width of the frame and the depth of the clip required to house this giant slug make for a large frame weapon. Doubling the width (and adding structural enhancements to accommodate the doubling) would make for something I would not be happy firing…unless I could get tentacle extensions for my fingers.

I presume that this is another of those “because I can…*” like climbing Mount Everest or diving to the bottom of the Challenger Deep. The thing is, IMHO, that making a mistake climbing a mountain or diving to the bottom of the ocean will most likely end in your demise and maybe someone else’s; making the right choice with this weapon will most likely end with someone else’s demise and perhaps a lawsuit for you. In the first instance, you’ll be dead but won’t have to pay for it; in the second instance you won’t be dead but will have to pay for it…and someone else will be dead. You just know (as impractical as this weapon is) that someone will want to have one…and someone else is foolish enough to actually use it.