Boots & Sabers

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Category: Technology

Online Deer Registration System Bogs Down

by | 1959, 23 Nov 15 | , | 0 Comments

One would have thought that they would have been able to predict the volume and prepare for it better. That being said, I registered a deer from Saturday on my mobile device and it worked like a charm. I loved the ease and convenience of it.

Nearly 116,000 deer were registered on the opening weekend of the 2015 Wisconsin gun deer hunting season, according to the Department of Natural Resources.

The volume of registrations caused a hiccup in the state’s new deer registration and reporting system.

The electronic system, used statewide for the first time this season, was unable to generate updates to the deer kill from Sunday evening to noon Monday.

A note posted Monday to the Department of Natural Resources website stated the reporting summary was “experiencing significant data gaps and delays. We are working to remedy the situation.”

The agency reported 115,971 deer were registered at noon Monday. But no details were available, such as the number of bucks and does registered, or county of kill. The DNR said it would post detailed registration data later.

The new “e-reg” system requires hunters to use a phone or computer to register their deer kills.

It was touted by the department as more convenient for hunters. It would also, the agency said, allow “the 9-day firearm season data to be updated in real time” and permit the public to track the number of deer registered.

Putin Eases Nuclear Cooperation with Iran

by | 0645, 23 Nov 15 | , , | 0 Comments

Why not?

Moscow (AFP) – President Vladimir Putin on Monday eased restrictions on Russian companies working on Iranian enrichment sites as he travelled to Tehran for his first visit since 2007.

A decree Putin signed on Monday enables Russian firms to help modify centrifuges at the Fordo enrichment site and help Tehran redesign its Arak heavy water reactor.

Russian companies can now also carry out activities linked to Iranian exports of enriched uranium of more than 300 kilograms in exchange for the supplies of natural uranium to Iran, the Kremlin decree said.

Maryland Scraps Gun “Fingerprint” System

by | 1803, 8 Nov 15 | , , | 7 Comments

Not a single case…

Millions of dollars later, Maryland has officially decided that its 15-year effort to store and catalog the “fingerprints” of thousands of handguns was a failure.

Since 2000, the state required that gun manufacturers fire every handgun to be sold here and send the spent bullet casing to authorities. The idea was to build a database of “ballistic fingerprints” to help solve future crimes.

But the system — plagued by technological problems — never solved a single case. Now the hundreds of thousands of accumulated casings could be sold for scrap.

Good for Maryland to recognize the failure after 15 years and stop it. There are plenty of failed government programs that have gone on for much longer.

OK to Shoot Down Drone

by | 0655, 29 Oct 15 | , , | 0 Comments

As the legal issues continue to work themselves out in the courts, this is a good outcome.

“He had a right to shoot at this drone, and I’m gonna dismiss this charge.” With that, Judge Rebecca Ward gaveled the case against William Meredith to a close. Meredith’s the Kentucky man whoshotgunned a drone out of the sky that he suspected was ogling his teenage daughter as she sunned herself. He faced charges of criminal mischief and wanton endangerment. “’The next time something like this happens, they’re gonna refer to it,’ Merideth said about future cases involving drones. ‘Now I don’t encourage people to just go out and start blasting stuff for no reason – but three times in one day, three times over the course of a year, six times total, over one property? That’s not right, that’s harassment.’”

Hat tip Dad29.

Islamic State Going After America’s Power Grid

by | 2128, 15 Oct 15 | , | 2 Comments

This is why you can’t let evil fester – even if it’s currently thousands of miles away.

The Islamic State is trying to hack American electrical power companies — but they are terrible at it.

U.S. law enforcement officials revealed the hack attempts on Wednesday at a conference of American energy firms who were meeting about national security concerns.

“ISIL is beginning to perpetrate cyberattacks,” Caitlin Durkovich, assistant secretary for infrastructure protection at the Department of Homeland Security, told company executives.

McDonald’s Kiosks Come to Wisconsin

by | 0617, 13 Oct 15 | , | 5 Comments

From the Washington County Insider:

The Golden Arches on Highway 60 added the kiosk in the lobby, just to the left of the entrance.

A simple touchscreen provides easy-to-read instructions to place an order, make a payment and then wait for staff to deliver.

The restaurant in Jackson is one of a select few nationwide to test the digital kiosk.

There are categories for food, drink, desserts. There was no line when I was there and it was relatively easy to figure everything out. It’s very similar to the self-checks at the grocery store.

The clerks said the most confusing part of the process has been the option to add or remove certain items from a burger in the “Create Your Taste” selection.

An article in Business Insider said “McDonald’s is not planning to pare down its work force as it adds the new kiosks to restaurants.”

If you think that adding kiosks is not about paring down the workforce, I have a bridge to sell you. Personally, I like the convenience of a kiosk where I can quickly order what I want and know that it was entered correctly, but the germaphobe in me has trouble with all of the grimy hands that have been all over those things.

Dell Acquires EMC

by | 2040, 12 Oct 15 | | 0 Comments

This is pretty huge.

In the biggest tech deal of all time, Dell announced Monday that it has agreed to buy corporate software, storage and security giant EMC for $67 billion.

The deal completes Dell’s transformation from a consumer PC business to an IT solutions provider for companies. That process began when Dell bought Perot Systems for $4 billion in 2009 and went full throttle in 2013 when company founder Michael Dell took the business private.

EMC is a behemoth of a corporate IT business. It is among the largest providers of storage hardware in the world. It also makes servers and owns security company RSA, which is known for its hard-to-crack SecurID tokens. And its most prized possession is its 81% stake in VMware — the company that rules the world of virtualization software that allows businesses to run various operating systems on their devices.

Hackers Attacked Clinton’s Server

by | 2209, 7 Oct 15 | , | 5 Comments

This should come as a surprise to nobody. Of course hackers were trying to get into the email of the Secretary of State of the United States of America. That’s why it was woefully dangerous and criminally negligent for Clinton to keep her email on a private system in the first place.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Hillary Rodham Clinton’s private email server, which stored some 55,000 pages of emails from her time as secretary of state, was the subject of attempted cyberattacks originating in China, South Korea and Germany after she left office in early 2013, according to a congressional document obtained by The Associated Press.

While the attempts were apparently blocked by a “threat monitoring” product that Clinton’s employees connected to her network in October 2013, there was a period of more than three months from June to October 2013 when that protection had not been installed, according to a letter from Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., chairman of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee. That means her server was possibly vulnerable to cyberattacks during that time.

California Bans Drones Over Private Property

by | 2134, 6 Oct 15 | , | 0 Comments

Wow… a reasonable law from California.

California has put limits on flying drones, in an effort to stop paparazzi photographers from snapping photos of celebrities from afar.

The law expands the state’s definition of invasion of privacy to include sending a drone over private property to make a recording or take photos.

Notice that people can still fly a drone over private property in transit, they just can’t take pictures over the property.

Peeple

by | 2009, 4 Oct 15 | | 0 Comments

This ought to be an interesting social experiment. I’ll go on record that I won’t believe anything people say about any of you nice folks on Peeple.

Peeple has been likened by critics and supporters alike as a Yelp-style review service at which people are rated, without their consent, the same way a person might give a grade to a restaurant or an airline.

Yelp was quick to make it clear it was not associated with the Peeple startup, which some reports valued at $7.6 million based on investment funding raised.

Peeple is an app for rating and commenting about those who one interacts with in daily life personally, professionally, or romantically, according to the forthepeeple.com website.

Founders and close friends Julia Cordray and Nicole McCullough defended their creation on Thursday as an online venue for praise and constructive feedback.

A firestorm of criticism at Twitter, Facebook and other online venues countered that the creators of Peeple were either naively or intentionally downplaying how nasty commentary can get on the Internet.

Online Goats

by | 1701, 1 Oct 15 | , | 9 Comments

Where there’s a market…

Muslims around the world will celebrate Eid-al-Adha on Friday by sacrificing livestock and sharing the meat with family and friends. The tradition has an ancient backstory for Muslims, commemorating Ibrahim’s willingness to sacrifice his own son Ismail on a request from God.

The celebration now has a modern, tech-savvy offshoot in India: you can skip the stench and mania of the cattle market and buy a live goat on the Internet, all from the comfort of your home.

OLX, an online marketplace, has hundreds of goats for sale across India, ranging from a few dollars per animal to as much as $10,000.

“Healthy,” “attractive” and even “cute” — there are page after page of descriptions and galleries.

Volkswagen Caught Cheating Emissions Testing

by | 0717, 22 Sep 15 | , | 2 Comments

Boom.

The EPA found the “defeat device”, the device that allowed VW cars to emit less during tests than they would while driving normally, in diesel cars including the Audi A3 and the VW Jetta, Beetle, Golf and Passat models.

VW has stopped selling the relevant diesel models in the US, where diesel cars account for about a quarter of its sales.

The EPA said that the fine for each vehicle that did not comply with federal clean air rules would be up to $37,500 (£24,000). With 482,000 cars sold since 2008 involved in the allegations, it means the fines could reach $18bn.

Computers In Classroom Don’t Improve Results

by | 2344, 14 Sep 15 | , | 2 Comments

This is something that many of us have been saying for years.

The report from the OECD examines the impact of school technology on international test results, such as the Pisa tests taken in more than 70 countries and tests measuring digital skills.

It says that education systems which have invested heavily in information and communications technology have seen “no noticeable improvement” in Pisa test results for reading, mathematics or science.

“If you look at the best-performing education systems, such as those in East Asia, they’ve been very cautious about using technology in their classrooms,” said Mr Schleicher.

“Those students who use tablets and computers very often tend to do worse than those who use them moderately.”

That being said, I support having more technology in classrooms. It better prepares kids for the modern workforce. But technology, in an of itself, is not a substitute for education. It is merely a tool that is only as good or bad as the people using it. I suspect that the worse performance with technology is temporary because it is a distraction and will level out once the technology is fully embedded into the delivery of education.

EMP Knocks Out British Satellite

by | 1948, 12 Sep 15 | | 0 Comments

In 1962.

On 10 September 1962 an extraordinary memo passed across the desk of British prime minister Harold Macmillan. The confidential document detailed the events leading up to the failure of the UK’s first satellite, Ariel-1.

This spacecraft – a joint venture with the United States – had been launched in April that year to investigate the Earth’s upper atmosphere and study the effects of X-ray radiation from the Sun. This scientific satellite had performed faultlessly until transmissions ceased suddenly on 13 July.

The date of Ariel-1’s demise was no coincidence.

The satellite failed four days after the US detonated a 1.4 megaton nuclear warhead, in an experiment known as Starfish Prime, high in the atmosphere 400 kilometres (250 miles) above the Pacific Ocean.

The explosion – the world’s most powerful high altitude nuclear test – created an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) strong enough to disrupt global radio communications and even blow out streetlights on the ground in Hawaii. It also created a new (temporary) radiation belt around the Earth and it was this that did for Ariel-1.

British government documents detailing the fate of the satellite remained locked away for 50 years. Reading through a copy of the file stamped ‘secret’ in red letters today, it is clear why: Nasa realised almost immediately what had happened to the satellite but the UK was, embarrassingly, kept in the dark.

Milwaukee Mayor Wants Universal Body Cameras for Cops

by | 0914, 1 Sep 15 | , | 2 Comments

OK.

Milwaukee may soon become one of the largest cities in the United States to outfit all of its patrol officers with body cameras under a proposal by Mayor Tom Barrett.

The mayor said on Sunday that he will include in his preliminary city budget a proposal to spend $880,000 to equip all of the city’s 1,200 patrol officers with body cameras by the end of 2016.

“I want our police officers to be in a position to demonstrate beyond a reasonable doubt that they are acting professionally,” Barrett said during a news conference.

Many U.S. cities have taken interest in supplying body cameras to their police departments after a series of widely publicized shootings by white police officers of unarmed African Americans over the last couple of years.

But the cost of body cameras, which can run from $350 to $700 apiece, has hindered widespread adoption in many cities where budgets are tight.

The cost of supplying body cameras to all Milwaukee patrol officers and video storage would increase to about $1 million in 2017, the mayor said.

In general, I think body cameras are a good idea. The technology is such that it is relative light and inexpensive. But many of the details still need to be worked out to balance privacy concerns for the police and the public. Also, body cameras are not a panacea and should not be viewed as such. They will offer one more piece of information to consider when evaluating a police officer’s interaction with a member of the public – or a member of the public’s interaction with a police officer.

Body cameras are, however, another thing that adds to the cost of a police force. That cost needs to be weighed against any potential benefit outside of a mayor pandering to the anti-police community before his reelection campaign.

Netflix Changes Direction

by | 2200, 31 Aug 15 | , | 3 Comments

As a Netflix subscriber, I think this is a mistake.

Thousands of movies will be removed from Netflix after the streaming service decided not to renew a deal with distributor Epix.

Removed titles will include the Hunger Games and Transformers movies.

Netflix, which has more than 60 million subscribers worldwide, said it wanted to focus on exclusive content.

Rival service Hulu will take on the Epix catalogue. “Our subscribers have been asking us for more, and more recent, big movies,” Hulu said.

Some of their original content is great, but it’s not usually what I log into Netflix for. Almost none of it is appropriate for kids. And I like to watch the latest big action flick or an old movie that I haven’t seen in a long time. If I can’t find those anymore, I’ll probably move over to Hulu and drop Netflix, because I don’t want to pay for two content portals.

Time will tell, I guess.

Hillary: “trying to do a better job of explaining to people”

by | 1536, 28 Aug 15 | , , | 1 Comment

Heh.

“Maybe when we get all this behind us, people should say hey, ‘let’s take a deep breath here and try to figure out, is that the best process?’ But right now, it doesn’t frustrate me. It’s just the reality,” she added. “And I’m trying to do a better job of explaining to people what’s going on so that there’s not all of this, you know, concern and there’s some sense made out of the confusion, and to answer people’s questions.”

She isn’t trying to do a better job of explaining anything. She is trying to come up with a plausible lie. The truth is easy to explain. A SOS, Hillary Clinton illegally used a private email server for all of her government correspondence – including the transport of government secrets. The reasons for her behavior are immaterial, but they probably have something to do with her desire to prevent the public and history from being able to scrutinize her work.

Tighten Your Nuts

by | 2106, 27 Aug 15 | | 1 Comment

It could save your life.

Washington (CNN)An Air Force reconnaissance airplane caught fire in April, endangering the lives of 27 airmen aboard the plane — all because a retaining nut connecting oxygen tubing was not tightened properly, accident investigators have determined. The report blamed a private defense contracting company for the accident.

“Failure by L-3 Communications depot maintenance personnel to tighten a retaining nut connecting a metal oxygen tube to a junction fitting above the galley properly caused an oxygen leak. This leak created a highly flammable oxygen-rich environment that ignited,” U.S. Air Force investigators wrote in report published August 3.

Drone Delivery to Prison Thwarted

by | 2102, 24 Aug 15 | | 1 Comment

They should let prison guards shoot drones out of the air from the guard towers.

The pair was found Saturday on a side road that runs alongside the Western Correctional Institution in Cumberland with the aircraft — which officials called a drone — in their vehicle, the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services announced in a press release.

But officials don’t think they were planning a joy ride.

Not after what else they found in the vehicle, which they suspect the two men planned to fly over onto the WCI’s grounds. One tweet from the state agency apparently shows the bounty: packets of K2 (or synthetic marijuana), tobacco, suboxone, pornographic DVDs and a handgun laid out on a table next to the four-propellered miniature aircraft.

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