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I decided to get out of the house on Friday and my choice of diversion was The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.  I’d noticed that this movie had gotten some bad reviews.  I decided to disregard these reviews and went in with an open mind. 

If you’re looking for Shakespearian drama that examines weighty issues, this movie isn’t for you.  But it was a good bit of eye candy and it had plenty of action.  The only thing that bothered me a bit was the speed of the action at times.  It seemed a little too fast (or perhaps the camera was too close).  Some of the action got a bit blurry.

It appears that Susan Smith is on the market (provided that incarcerated child murderers are your kind of thing).  She looks mighty happy in that picture (certainly not like someone who is being punished).  Despite her assertion that she’ll always “hurt for the pain” she’s caused, I don’t believe it.  It’s too bad she didn’t get to ride the lightning.

Link via Michele at a small victory.

A couple of days ago, Kim du Toit called for volunteers to assist people who are interested in learning to shoot.  I sent Kim my contact information, but I’ll reiterate the offer here. 

I live in Denton, but I can get around to just about anywhere in the D/FW area.  I’ll provide one of my guns (I recommend .22 pistols for new shooters, though), eye and ear protection, ammo, and the range fee as well as instruction on the basics of shooting safely.  So far I’ve helped teach five people how to shoot.

I just need to recruit a couple more people into the gun culture and I’ll get that toaster oven. 

People are now using the 3-D engines from some video games to make movies.

The fledgling art of using 3-D computer games to make animated movies is coming of age.

Around the world, increasing numbers of would-be movie moguls are utilizing the 3-D graphics engines of games like Quake or Unreal to produce animated movies—at a fraction of the money spent by studios like Pixar.

Known as machinima (“machine cinema”), the relatively new, no-budget genre has yet to produce a blockbuster of Finding Nemo proportions.

However, machinima is maturing so rapidly, some predict it will soon be a major force in animation, especially with the imminent arrival of a new generation of hardware and software promising an era of photo-realistic “cinematic computing.”

I recently built a new game PC with a GeForce FX 5600-based video card.  The software that came with the card included several demos, including one called Dawn, which features an animated pixie that is rendered in real time (in particular, the skin shader is impressive).  Here’s an image from the demo (there’s a video available at the above link as well):

Given this level of capability with today’s video cards I’m not surprised that people are using them to create real-time movies.  I would expect that in a few years we’ll be able to generate Pixar-quality real-time images with equipment that you can buy at Fry’s.

Link via Slashdot.

Update:  Nvidia has release a new chipset, the 5900, with some new demos.  In particular, the Last Chance Gas demo has a pretty good lighting model.

I have previously written about my privacy concerns with Sunglass Hut, and I sent them an email concerning my problems.  It’s been well over a month and I’ve never gotten a response.  However, their customer profiling activities have continued and they’ve ratcheted up their marketing to a new level.  They sent me a birthday discount coupon, which looked like a birthday card.  This did not thrill me, since I never gave them my birth date.  The only way they could have gotten this would have been through nefarious backdoor methods (i.e. pulling data from the credit card at the point of sale).

If they think this is going to encourage me to do business with them, they’re sadly mistaken.  Given their lack of response and their continued unauthorized use of my personal data I have now decided that I will never do business with them again in any form.  I will find other places to buy sunglasses (I see that Bass Pro carries Oakleys now, so I may check with them).

Update:  I called their “customer support” number.  After waiting for 5 minutes on hold for a representative, their system disconnected me.  I called back and managed to get someone after a couple of minutes (right about the time I was getting sick of the instrumental version of Bruce Hornsby’s “The Way It Is”).  I asked how they would have gotten my personal information, including my birthdate.  The representative told me that the only way they could get it would have been through the warranty registration.  I found this dubious, since I generally don’t fill out warranty registrations unless the object in question is of high value.  But it’s been more than a year, and I can barely remember what I did yesterday, so I didn’t argue about it.  I just told her that I wanted to be off the mailing list.

In any event, if I did give them my information, and the request for it was presented to me as a warranty registration, then they’d still be using it against my wishes, since I would not have given permission to use it for marketing purposes.

I’ve been meaning to write about RFID tags since I got an email on Monday about a security hole on the Auto-ID center’s website that allowed anyone to access their confidential documents.  These documents related to market studies on RFID tags and how they would “pacify” consumers with regards to their “emotional” privacy fears.  CASPIAN’s email might be a bit breathless and overblown concerning the issue, but the documents are still somewhat damning to the industry.  They have since pulled the documents (or fixed the hole), but not before Cryptome mirrored them.

For those that haven’t been following the issue, an RFID tag is a small (imagine a grain of rice or smaller) passive (non-powered) microchip that emits a radio signal with a unique identifier when it is hit by a radio transmission in a certain frequency range (it varies for each device).  The signal is of very low power and can only be read (at present) within a few feet (once again, this varies by device from approximately 3 to 15 feet).  The idea is that these tags can be used to track inventory in stores and warehouses.  If you had a case of razors, simply moving the box by an RFID scanner would tell you how many you had in the case.  Stores are interested in this technology as a replacement to barcodes (both for automated checkout and for “smart shelves” that could manage inventory).

At this point you may be wondering what the big deal about all this is.  After all, it’s just a way of tracking products.  And at present the trials are just in warehouses (with tags attached to pallets and boxes).  However, the industry direction is to push the price of these tags down to less than one cent per tag so that the tags can be embedded in the product (or in its packaging).  This level of tracking would be required to realize the goals of automated checkout and smart shelves.

It’s at this point that people like me who worry about privacy get concerned.  If the tag is not deactivated (in a way that we can trust is permanent) at the point of sale, it leads to the possibility of tracking on a scale that boggles the mind.  The RFID tag is different from a bar code in that each and every RFID tag emits a unique identifier.  This means that not only does the RFID tag identify the type of an object, it identifies the specific instance of that object (like a serial number).  If this is linked to purchase records, it means that anyone with a scanner and access to the records could identify you and everything you have on or about your person.

Of course, the RFID people claim that they would never do this.  And I think they may actually mean it.  However, I don’t trust that the businesses that get their hands on this technology won’t abuse it in the future.  Also, the RFID people claim that the tags can only be read from a short distance, so it’s unlikely that you could be easily scanned.  Once again, I find this unpersuasive.  Most stores these days have scanners at their entrances and exits that work with the existing inventory control system.  In some cases, they force you to walk though a choke-point where the scanner is only a few feet from you.  It wouldn’t take much to convert one of these to an RFID scanner.

Can you imagine a business that wouldn’t drool over the ability to know who you are and what you’re carrying when you walk into a store?  While some would say that this is good, I don’t agree.  The potential for misuse is far too high.

Another concern is that criminals could obtain scanners and could instantly know what you’re carrying if they got near you.  Also, there is concern that new technology could be developed that increased the range of the scanners.  The RFID industry tries to downplay this angle by saying that the power of the chips is so low that they can’t be read at a distance.  And it’s true that the chips rely on the EM from the scanner to be activated.  However, advances in technology of the receiver might someday allow for greater ranges (or even for the signal to be read through a wall).  If that ever happens, and you have a houseful of RFID equipped stuff (provided they aren’t premanently deactivated), a criminal could scan your house and know what you had without having to come in. 

Or even if the privacy issue is ignored, the potential for wrongful harassment by “loss prevention” types is still there.  Imagine if the system wasn’t coded correctly (or lost data) and thought that the pair of pants you bought there last week weren’t actually sold.  You’d be detained by security on the way out and have to prove that you bought the pants you’re wearing.  If you don’t think it can happen, I experienced something similar when I was in college concerning the library’s security system and a textbook that I legally owned.

At this point, though, it appears that the technology is still too immature to use on store shelves.  Wal-Mart, which championed bar codes in the 80’s, was hot to use RFID tags, but they’ve cancelled a trial in one of their stores.  They will now focus on warehouse operations.  But this doesn’t mean that they’ve given up.  It just means that it has been delayed.  And I suspect that we’ll see a public relations campaign to “pacify” the public’s privacy fears in the meantime.

What I find interesting is that while the industry had paid lip service to privacy concerns, they don’t seem really interested in killing the RFID tag at the point of sale.  They’re adding a “kill” feature to some of the new chips, but they want to make you “opt-out” of using the tag, rather than having you opt-in to leaving it active.  For me, I want them all dead when I leave the store, and this will be yet another hassle to deal with at checkout.  They keep talking about a “smart house” concept where your pantry keeps track of the food and your washer knows the right settings for the clothes, but their own market research (which they conveniently left open for us to read) shows that people think that the concept is ridiculous.  If I was prone to conspiracy theories, I’d think that they are looking for a way to spin the technology so that we’ll accept keeping the tags alive.  Then they would be able to implement the other tracking features that worry people like me.  But that’s only if I were to buy into conspiracy theories. 

In the meantime, I’m going to keep watching this issue.  If it comes to market, and I don’t trust their implementation of it, I’ll have to examine how to disable them myself (they say that microwaving works, but that it could set the object on fire, which would be a definite drawback).  I suspect that there will come a day when we won’t be able to buy an object without an RFID tag in it.  We need to be vigilant to make sure that the RFID tags are handled on our terms.

I’ve been back since Sunday evening, but going out of town always messes up my schedule the following week.  You don’t realize how much stuff you do on Sunday until you have to do it on Monday and Tuesday.

We fired off approximately one metric assload of fireworks on the Fourth.  I got carried away at the fireworks stand and ended up buying way too much stuff (like this and those big “Pluto Invader” rockets).

My biggest mistake, though, was to buy some low-carb chocolate bars.  I always seem to forget about the caffeine in chocolate.  I don’t do caffeine very well (it makes me cranky and irritable) and now I’m going through withdrawal, which includes a massive headache.  Ugh…

The cable guy showed up a few minutes early and very quickly confirmed that the line was OK and that the cable modem itself was hosed.  He hooked up a new modem and got it provisioned and I’m back in business again.  All in all, Charter’s support worked well this time.

I’m about to head back to Big Sandy for the weekend.  It’s time to eat barbecue, drink beer, and set off fireworks.

I’ll be back next week.  Everyone have a great Fourth.

Scientists at UC Berkeley have proposed a system that would prevent airplanes from flying into certain areas.

They propose modifying the avionics in aircraft so that the plane would fight any efforts by the pilot to fly into restricted airspace. So if a plane was flying with a no-fly-zone to the left, and the pilot started banking left to enter the zone, the avionics would counter by banking right. Lee’s system, called “soft walls”, would first gently resist the pilot, and then become increasingly forceful until it prevailed.

An interesting idea, and marginally safer than other proposals (i.e. remote controlled takeovers or automatic landing systems), but not one that I would want to fly with.  But I’m not the only one.  The pilots themselves are hostile to the idea, and I don’t blame them.  However, the scientists don’t seem to understand why.

He has yet to convince the people who fly the planes. “In general, pilots are openly hostile,” he says. “Frankly it surprises me, because of all of the options that they are facing right now – including being shot at or commandeered from the ground – this is their best one.”

First, that presupposes that these options are the only ones available.  He fails to consider the best option: arming all pilots (which will require getting those idiots at the TSA out of the way).  But more importantly, pilots are rightfully reluctant to give up control of the aircraft to the computer.

A perfect example of the disconnect between engineers and (most) pilots can be seen when comparing Airbus verus Boeing commercial passenger jets.  It’s really a difference in philosophy (and in some ways reflects the problems that have arisen between Europe and the United States recently).  The Airbus has hard limits, beyond which it will not go, even if it would be needed to save the aircraft (although they claim that the system tries to prevent the aircraft from getting into those situations to begin with, which is questionable to me).  The Boeing uses soft limits, which means that the pilot will receive a warning when the limit is about to be violated, but can still go beyond the limit.  It has been shown several times that pilots have saved the plane from disaster by going over the limits, or as one pilot put it.

“Although aircraft structural integrity may be compromised by a G-load in excess of 3.8 Gs, aircraft structural integrity is more severely compromised by terrain impact.”

All of which is why I am very wary of getting on an Airbus.  If there is any choice at all, I won’t fly on one.

Ack.  I seem to have been infected by a Star Wars meme when naming those last two entries.  It probably happened when I was reading the comments on Slashdot to the telemarketer story (someone had “<ackbar>It’s a trap.</ackbar>” in their comment).

Anyway, I am somewhat surprised so far with Charter’s support.  I expected it to be a crapfest, but they’ve been pleasant and helpful.  They responded to my problem report within a couple of hours.  They remotely checked the modem and found that it was reporting a low uptime, so they will send a technician out this evening to look at it.  It’s possible that the modem is starting to go bad.  It’s been almost continuously powered on since November, 2000.  I also reported a billing problem to them (they started billing me for modem rental, even though I own the modem) and they responded quickly that they’d fix it and research back to credit me for any previous months that were billed.

This makes for an interesting contrast to the trouble one of my coworkers initially had with Comcast.  He isn’t capable of using DSL (too far from the branch office), so cable is the only viable alternative (satellite internet costs a bundle to install and fixed-wireless has high monthly charges).  He tried to use their online form to order their service, but all he got back was an email (two days later) that said they could not process the order “at this time”.  No explanation was given.  He tried calling the 800 number given in the email.  After navigating the VRU menus, he was told that his call could not be completed at this time.  He finally managed to find their local number and call them directly.  The local person was much more helpful and got everything taken care of pretty quickly.  I guess they’re more motivated to help since they’re in a local office where you can go gripe at them in person.