aubreyturner.org

So very wrong, yet so entertaining. 

Somehow, I think this guy would greatly enjoy it.

I suppose I haven’t been paying close enough attention, but Texas has negotiated three new reciprocity agreements since the last time I looked.  We now have reciprocity with Idaho, Utah, and Mississippi.  This brings the total to 19 states where Texans can carry (12 with direct reciprocity agreements, 2 where no permit is required, and 5 that recognize the Texas permit even without a reciprocity agreement).

Last night’s Citizen’s Fire Academy class was a demonstration of the protective gear that firefighters wear, from the boots and bunker gear to the air packs and masks.  After demonstrating the features of the gear and how it is used, we were given the chance to wear it.  They fitted us with full bunker gear and an air pack and mask.  They were originally intending to send us into a smoke filled room, but their smoke generator wasn’t working.  Since they wanted us to experience what it was like in a fire they covered our masks and turned out the lights.  In a real fire it is unlikely that you’ll be able to see anything, so you have to rely on your hearing and sense of touch. 

They sent us in in groups of three.  We were on our hands and knees, following a hose line and holding on to the person in front of us.  They stressed how important it was to keep contact with your team members and with the hose line.  In a real fire the hose line would be your life line if you had to escape.

It’s hard to describe just how disorienting the experience was.  To get an idea, you first have to consider the bunker gear itself.  It’s got a layer of insulation inside to protect you against heat in a fire.  But that insulation is just as effective at keeping heat in.  It was somewhere around 75°F last night, which is fairly comfortable until you put on the gear.  You’ll start sweating before you even have a chance to zip up the coat.  After you get this stuff on, you have a hood (kind of like a balaclava) that covers you head.  You put that on and then pull it down in preparation for putting on the mask.  The mask has to fit tightly against your face to get an airtight seal.  Once that’s in place you pull up the hood and make sure it covers the edges of the mask.  The goal of this operation is to ensure that you have no exposed skin.  If you do, you’ll likely be burned.

By this time you’re starting to notice that it seems harder to breathe.  While you’re getting plenty of air through the front of the mask, it seems unnatural.  The next item to go on is the helmet, which has its own integral hood that helps cover the back of your neck.  The helmet has to be snug enough to stay on, but not so snug that it dislodges the mask.  Finally, the hose assembly from the airpack is attached to the mask.  The system has a check valve that requires you to take a deep breath to get the air flowing.  If your mask isn’t properly sealed, or the valve is a little too strong, it might seem like it’s never going to flow. 

So now you’ve got all the equipment on and you have to remember that you can breathe.  That you’re getting enough air and to breathe normally or you’ll use up the tank too soon.  Now you line up with your team and wait to go in.  Every few seconds your airpack’s integrated electronics beep at you if you don’t move, so you have to shake the thing to let it know you’re not incapacited.  Now all of you get on the floor and start crawling in, holding on to the ankle of the person in front of you and the hose line.  You can’t see anything.  The only way you can interact with your environment is through touch and sound.  Just as the lead member of your group finds the item you’re seeking, you start to hear chirping and bells.  Is it your pack?  No, your lead’s tank is almost empty.  It only has a few minutes left.  You now all have to turn around and make your way back, trying to go more quickly as the beeping and ringing get louder and more insistent.  You finally reach the outside and have to get back on your feet, which is difficult with the extra weight on your back and the disorientation.  Once you finally get the gear off you realize you’re drenched in sweat.  The whole exercise, from entry to exit, took five minutes or less.

This was just a short exercise to get an idea of what firefighters face whenever they have to enter a burning building.  We were only in there for five minutes (maybe less, it was hard to tell), and on the air tanks for a few minutes more as we got ready.  The tanks are rated for 45 minutes, although in reality that means about 30 minutes of actual use (our lead’s tank ran out because a lot of people had used it before him; real firefighters have their own packs with a reserve tank).  It would take tremendous physical stamina to be able to wear that gear for 30 minutes in the heat of a fire (or even our typical summer heat) without collapsing from heat stroke.  Additionally, the equipment is pretty confining.  If you’re claustrophobic, the gear may be intolerable (more so in our case, since the masks were covered to simulate fire conditions).  In fact, we had a couple of people who got suited up in preparation for going into the room and then had to have the gear removed.

I always knew that firefighters had a hot, strenuous, and dirty job.  But I didn’t really appreciate just how strenuous it was until last night. 

The FBI has raided the US facilities of Rackspace and taken hard drives which housed portions of Indymedia.  They also served a warrant against Rackspace to have them turn over drives from their London location which housed portions of various worldwide Indymedia websites.

The below is taken from an Indymedia press release, which was posted to Slashdot, given that portions of Indymedia are nonfunctional.

The US authorities issued a subpoena to Rackspace’s office in the US ordering them to physically remove Indymedia hardware located in London. Rackspace is one of Indymedia’s web hosting providers with offices in the US and London. Rackspace complied and turned over Indymedia’s hard drives/servers in the UK. This affects some 20+ Indymedia sites worldwide.

Frankly, it’s about damn time.  After allowing information stolen from Protest Warrior to remain on their site for days and publishing the personal information on the RNC delegates, they needed to be investigated to see if they had any part of these acts.

No, I’m not bitter about receiving several virus-laden emails a day on my old Protest Warrior email address.  Why do you ask?

What was this guy thinking at the time?

SALT LAKE CITY – If you can’t stand the heat, don’t pour gasoline down the toilet. An apartment tenant made that $75,000 mistake Tuesday.

The man came home for lunch and found gas leaking from the tank of his car. He caught the gas, and decided to dispose of it by dumping it down the toilet.

But the pilot light of a water heater ignited the fumes, causing a small explosion. The blast destroyed the porcelain toilet, and the intense heat from the flames melted the remaining pieces.

Sounds like another Darwin candidate in action.

In a case of out of control cruse control, a man in France got quite a shock when his Renault suddenly accelerated to 120mph and wouldn’t slow down.

A motorist in France went a little faster than he wanted when he claimed his cruise control got stuck, leaving him barreling down a busy highway at 120 mph and forcing police to help clear a route.

The Le Parisien newspaper quoted Hicham Dequiedt saying he was overtaking a truck when his Renault Vel Satis started to accelerate with a life of its own. He couldn’t cut the ignition, he said, because his car has a magnetic card instead of a key.

“It was impossible to slow down! Stomping on the brakes proved pointless, nothing worked. I avoided one car after another by flashing my lights at them,” the 29-year-old was quoted as saying.

Alternately, he could just be a really crafty speeder, getting the cops to clear the way for him.  Actually, according to a post in the Slashdot discussion, it sounds like a case of too many electronic gadgets that came together to take away control from the driver.  The ignition used an electronic key card, which he wasn’t able to remove.  Further, with this kind of electronic ignition, the computer takes your command to start or kill the engine as a mere suggestion.  The computer actually makes the decision.  Likewise with the transmission.  If it would overspeed the engine, the electronic transmission controls will not allow downshifting or going to neutral.  You can then imagine how useful the brakes would be in a car at 120mph with the engine going all out and the transmission in gear.  I would imagine that brake fade would occur pretty quickly. 

He eventually managed to remove the key card and the car stopped.  There’s speculation that he could have gotten the key out sooner, but panic had set in.  Alternately, there could have been a bug in the controller software that wedged the controller.  After a while a watchdog timer would likely have restored the system to a semi-normal state.  Given all this, you can bet that they’ll never be able to recreate it back at the factory. 

I mentioned in my last entry that we’d be having a class this morning on vehicle extrication.  After giving us an overview of the equipment and procedures, they let us loose on an unsuspecting automobile.

Here’s our victim, being used to demonstrate the fire department’s airbag (which is capable of lifting a train car or flipping this little car over, although they didn’t want to do that for us, since it would make too much mess):

After stabilizing the car using blocks (this is done to prevent the car from bouncing, which could potentially cause further injury to the person trapped inside if they have a neck injury), we then began with a lesson on how to break the tempered glass on the car (the antenna turns out to be a handy tool for this).  After that, we went to work on it with the hydraulic cutter and spreader, taking off the roof and doors.  Finally, a hydraulic ram was used to push up the dash to get it out of the way (as would be needed in an extrication where the person might be pinned). 

After all was said and done, all the parts were thrown back onto the victim in preparation for removal:

And here we have the crew responsible for this mayhem:

As you may notice, we are all wearing bunker gear.  This was necessary for protection from broken glass, sharp metal, and not least the potential danger of the equipment itself.  The cutters and the spreader are powered by a hydraulic pump which produces 10,500 psi.  If one of those hoses were to break, the fluid would be very dangerous to anyone who isn’t protected.  Despite that, though, it was a lot of fun to get to play with this equipment.

It’s not like they would have made any difference to me anyhow.  I didn’t watch the debate because I was in the Keller Citizen’s Fire Academy last night.  The class included a tour of the fire engines, ropes, ladders, and what they call “hose evolutions.”  We were also fitted for bunker gear for the upcoming class on vehicle extrication and a simulated fire exercise.  We learned how they use the fire hoses and were given a chance to use them.  I always knew that those hoses were under pressure and it took some manhandling to manipulate them, but I never fully appreciated just how much effort it took.  They typically run the hoses somewhere between 90 and 120psi, depending on hose length and other conditions.  They took pity on us and only ran it around 80-90psi.  Even with that it took a coordinated effort between the person on the nozzle and the people on the hose to aim the stream.  It was easier on the fog setting, which is used to quickly cool down a room.  It was amazing how much cooling effect that fog spray has.  It creates a suction behind it and cools the air for quite a distance.  If you watch firemen on TV, you may also notice that they use a circular motion with the fog setting.  I learned that it’s important to use a clockwise motion, which works with the Coriolis effect to move the smoke and heat away from you.  If you go counter-clockwise in this hemisphere you could end up with smoke and heat coming back on you.

But the centerpiece of the class was Keller’s newest addition, a 100-ft ladder truck, unit T583:

(original source of photo is here, which is odd given that you’d think the Keller Fire Department would have more info on this truck on their website)

It might seem like overkill for a city the size of Keller to acquire an $800,000 100-ft ladder truck (with all equipment it comes close to $1 million).  However, they explained that with recent growth Keller now has several buildings that would require this kind of truck if a fire were to break out.  The new town hall is a good example (a picture can be seen here).  They would not have been able to fight a fire in the new town hall with their existing apparatus.  Additionally, there are a number of large homes in some of the newer subdivisions that require a long ladder to be able to get over the fire from the property line.  In those cases it’s a matter of both height and length.  This ladder is capable of full horizontal extension if needed, which allows for people to get into the basket from the ground and for them to move the ladder to any position needed.  In one of our previous classes, they also mentioned that this truck would be needed for a new assisted living center that is currently being planned.  It will be a four-story wood-frame structure, requiring a tall ladder for any kind of rescue and fire fighting operation.  Finally, there’s the Home Depot, which while it isn’t terribly tall, is a very large building and would require a lot of elevation to get water where it’s needed.

The final thing they did for the class was to allow us to go up in the basket.  They gave us safety belts which attached to the basket with large carabiners then took us up two at a time.  I usually don’t like heights, but I was surprised that this wasn’t too bad.  It rocked a bit when it changed direction, but otherwise it was quite smooth.  According to the readout in the basket we were at 101-ft.  From there we could see most of Keller, although given that it was dark it was hard to make out some of the details.

These classes are intended to give local residents a good understanding of what the fire department does and how they operate.  But I think they’re shrewd to let us get such a close look at the equipment in that it gives us a better understanding of why these things are necessary.  I gripe a lot about taxes (although in the overall scheme of things, the city taxes aren’t that bad; it’s the damn school taxes that bug me), and I’m generally of the opinion that the less done by government the better.  But fire and police are probably services that can be effectively delivered by local governments.  There are a lot of other things that Keller does that seem wasteful to me (like the town hall, which seems a bit extravagant or the aquatic center with the stupid name), but police and fire spending seem like good things to me.  This class has just helped me determine that our fire spending is going to the right things.

It looks like RFID tags may make it onto store shelves sooner than we had been led to believe.  The industry had been trying to say that this could be as much as ten years away and that their current efforts were geared towards case and palette tracking.  However, Wal-Mart is already running a trial with HP printers in the Dallas area.  Additionally, a major national clothing retailer appears ready to bring this out as early as next year on all of their retail clothing items.

As I’ve mentioned before, I have serious privacy concerns about the use of RFID tags on individual items that we purchase.  If it’s just on the packaging, and we throw away the packaging, that would probably be OK (which is what Wal-Mart claims is the case with the HP printers; Hmm…  I still have my packaging from the last HP printer I bought, just in case I need to send it back, although I bought it at Fry’s).  It’s when the RFID tag is embedded in the item and can’t be removed that things get nasty.

The problem with RFID tags is that they don’t just identify what something is (i.e. a particular brand/size of a known brand item), they also give a unique identifier for that instance of the object (a serial number).  If you can read the tag to get the serial number and cross-reference that with sales data you can tell a lot about a person. 

The RFID industry is desperate to debunk these “concerns” as not realistic or to reassure us that any purchase databases will be protected.  Let’s examine the potential problems.

Privacy activists worry that consumers could leave stores broadcasting all kinds of information about their belongings. They fear that, with the right tools, anyone—including thieves—could detect what’s in your purse or pockets. Another concern is that people’s things would leave an electronic trail of their whereabouts and shopping habits for law enforcement officials, investigators, lawyers or marketers to collect.

RFID defenders say such concerns are overblown—a common theme at this conference. One argument is that the only information companies are interested in storing on RFID tags are serial numbers, which are meaningless without access to the database where all the information about the item lives. Only the privileged eyes of certain employees would have access to that database, executives say. Another argument is that RFID tags only submit signals only when prompted by a reader within close range, generally a few feet at most.

Concerning this database of serial numbers, I simply don’t trust these companies to run such a thing without the potential for privacy leaks.  Further, even if they do manage to put in place a decent and effective privacy policy today, there’s nothing to stop them from changing the terms later on, after they’ve amassed a tremendous database (“I am altering the terms of our deal.  Pray I do not alter them further.”).  If you think I’m paranoid, you may want to revisit the original debates on the establishment of Social Security Numbers.  People who were concerned about this were given assurances that the SSN would never be used for any purpose other than providing Social Security.  Heck, it’s even in the law that the SSN is not to be used for identification purposes.  That really did a lot of good, didn’t it?

As noted above, the RFID industry claims that these tags can only be read from a few feet away.  Even that’s not sufficient if you can get people to pass through some kind of chokepoint where they pass a few feet from a reader.  Ever notice those vertical “dividers” placed between doors in most retail stores these days?  Those are magnetic readers for current loss-prevention systems.  That kind of chokepoint could be readily adapted for RFID purposes. 

But even given that these devices are limited to short ranges today, how can we definitely say that there will never be technology capable of activating and reading the tag at greater ranges?  I wouldn’t take that bet.  I wonder if the original inventors of the CRT ever thought about van Eck Phreaking?

So, to sum it up, I don’t trust the companies to guard my privacy in the future with regard to the serial numbers of products I’ve purchased, and I don’t trust that technology won’t be found that allows reading the tags at longer ranges.  However, there is a simple solution to my concerns.  Simply kill the tags at the time of purchase. 

Of course, the RFID industry is quick to resist this solution.  They give a variety of reasons, but my suspicion is that they ultimately do want to be able to track everything at some point in the future (even if they won’t admit it to themselves). 

Here’s their current set of excuses:

Retailers and consumer-goods companies are hesitant to agree to removing tags from items at the time of purchase for several reasons. One reason is that RFID tags could help with returns by exposing people trying to get a refund for a product they never really bought, or one they purchased from another store. In the future, technology proponents envision medicine cabinets and home appliances equipped with RFID readers, alerting people to expired drugs and automatically selecting the gentle cycle on the washing machine for delicate clothing.

Frankly, I don’t give a damn about these problems.  I’m willing to pay the slightly higher prices that refund scams generate in exchange for privacy.  Frankly, there are non-RFID methods for dealing with fraud, though, so I find this an unpersuasive point.  As far as these “smart home” concepts, the industry’s own research shows that people don’t care about these things (although they keep hammering on this; in my more cynical moments I think they hope it will be the sugar that helps people to swallow RFIDs).

All the industry needs to do is make sure the tags are killable and that people are fully informed about how to make sure they’re dead before leaving the store.  That one thing would mollify me.  As long as they resist this, I will regard them with a high level of suspicion.  Resisting what seems to me to be such a reasonable request makes me very wary of their ultimate motives.

Some previous items I’ve written on the subject of RFID tags:
The basic problem.
RFID and cameras.
Implanting RFID chips.

Lately I’ve been listening to this station in the mornings because they don’t talk a lot (no DJ) and I need all the help I can get to get myself moving.  But there’s one song (make sure your pop-up blocker is fully engaged before clicking) in particular that’s been bugging me.

Let’s set the background first, which includes infidelity and an unexpected pregnancy:

Now this gon’ be the hardest thing I think I ever had to do
Got me talkin’ to myself askin’ how I’m gon’ tell you
‘bout that chick on part 1 I told ya’ll I was creepin’ with, creepin’ with
Said she’s 3 months pregnant and she’s keepin’ it
The first thing that came to mind was you
Second thing was how do I know if it’s mine and is it true
Third thing was me wishin’ that I never did what I did

He can keep wishing that until the sun implodes, but wishes are worth what he paid for them.  Anyhow, after screwing everything up, he whines that this is “the hardest thing I think I’ve ever had to do.”

This by far is the hardest thing I think I’ve ever had to do
To tell you, the woman I love
That I’m having a baby by a woman that I barely even know
I hope you can accept the fact that I’m man enough to tell you this

You know, I can almost believe that it is the hardest thing he’s had to do.  He obviously has no experience doing the real hard thing, which is living up to his obligation not to screw around on his girlfriend (and that’s not even mentioning the danger of what he’s likely bringing home from his unprotected encounter with the other woman and exposing his girlfriend to; this bugs me no end, because I know a young woman who got a really nasty, lifetime surprise of high-risk HPV from her no-good ex-boyfriend, one that will likely mean she can’t ever have children). 

I don’t like people who break their promises and then whine about the consequences.  I’m not one of those social conservatives who rails about people screwing around (heck, I’m not even a conservative).  Instead,  I think about things in terms of commitments (sort of like contracts, actually).  People can do whatever they want with one another, provided that everything is consensual and all parties are aware of and fully understand the terms.  There’s a wronged party in this situation who only found out after the fact, once the damage had been done.  If he wanted a “chick on the side”, he should have found someone who was OK with that. 

I know, this is just a song.  I need to get out of here and hit the range.  I missed my fix last week.