Monday, January 30, 2017
$2107 each for a handgun?
Seems very pricey. But that is the price the government is willing to pay for the new Sig Saur handgun that will replace the current unloved M9 Beretta. The Sig will be made in New Hampshire, a good thing as far as this NH resident is concerned. It will be chambered for 9mm Luger which is standard world wide, despite a lot of shooters feeling that anything less than .45 ain't enough for serious work.
Microsoft Update stopped working
Microsoft Update had been working happily on my aging XP desktop for some years. I have trusty desktop set to notify me of updates rather than just zap them in automatically. Now and then I run Microsoft update by hand from Internet Exploder. Today Microsoft Updates started and then choked up with an error message about how it could not access the internet. Hmm. And it popped up a network diagnostic button which I pushed figuring it wouldn't do any harm. Network Diags trundled for a while and then reported that my firewall was blocking ports 80 (http) 443 (https) and 21 (FTP).
So, hit "Settings" and then Microsoft Firewall. And punch a button marked port. And type in the three port numbers (80, 443, and 21). Firewall complained about port 80 claiming it was already present. But it accepted the other two ports. And then Microsoft update started to work.
For all this hacking, Microsoft update did not find any serious updates for me. I browsed the non serious updates and decided than none of them would do my any good.
Still wondering what happened. Did Microsoft tighten up Update so that it needed the HTTPS port? Did some passing virus turn the ports off by way of defending itself? Should I get a better firewall?
So, hit "Settings" and then Microsoft Firewall. And punch a button marked port. And type in the three port numbers (80, 443, and 21). Firewall complained about port 80 claiming it was already present. But it accepted the other two ports. And then Microsoft update started to work.
For all this hacking, Microsoft update did not find any serious updates for me. I browsed the non serious updates and decided than none of them would do my any good.
Still wondering what happened. Did Microsoft tighten up Update so that it needed the HTTPS port? Did some passing virus turn the ports off by way of defending itself? Should I get a better firewall?
Sunday, January 29, 2017
New Hampshire GOP holds its annual meeting
I'm a delegate so I went. Had to get up at 5:45 to get down to Derry by 8 AM. It was snowing lightly in the Notch. I managed to get up my driveway and out on the road just before the town plow plowed me in. I93 was a tad slippery up in the Notch but dried out nicely by the time I got to N. Woodstock.
It being the annual meeting, many of us, yours truly included, wore coat and tie. It being New Hampshire, a lot of people showed up in blue jeans and hunting shirts. Meeting was called to order at 9. The only real business to address was election of the State Chairman. Somehow this took all day, we didn't get adjourned until 2:30. Lot of people got tired and left early.
There was the usual opening exercises, Governor Sununu gave a short speech, all the reports (treasurer, bylaw committee, etc) were read. This lasted til 10, and then trouble decended. Somebody got 9 or 10 changes to the party bylaws onto the agenda. The changes were poorly written, few of us delegates could understand what the bylaw changes meant and they started out with a confusing voting system were a yes vote was actually a no vote. They gave up on that after first amendment sucked up a half an hour before getting voted down. Another couple of hours was consumed voting down the rest of 'em, all except one, which authorized paying a salary to the state chairman. That passed cause most of the delegates could see that state chairman is a full time job, and few people can do a full time job without a salary. Real people have bills to pay.
Then we got to voting in new officers, treasurer, asst treasurer, secretary, asst secretary, vice chair, area chairs, and finally, we voted in Jeane Forester as state party chairman. That got us up to a little after 2PM and then we called it a day and adjourned. I got back home just around 5PM. Stupid Beast was glad to see me.
It being the annual meeting, many of us, yours truly included, wore coat and tie. It being New Hampshire, a lot of people showed up in blue jeans and hunting shirts. Meeting was called to order at 9. The only real business to address was election of the State Chairman. Somehow this took all day, we didn't get adjourned until 2:30. Lot of people got tired and left early.
There was the usual opening exercises, Governor Sununu gave a short speech, all the reports (treasurer, bylaw committee, etc) were read. This lasted til 10, and then trouble decended. Somebody got 9 or 10 changes to the party bylaws onto the agenda. The changes were poorly written, few of us delegates could understand what the bylaw changes meant and they started out with a confusing voting system were a yes vote was actually a no vote. They gave up on that after first amendment sucked up a half an hour before getting voted down. Another couple of hours was consumed voting down the rest of 'em, all except one, which authorized paying a salary to the state chairman. That passed cause most of the delegates could see that state chairman is a full time job, and few people can do a full time job without a salary. Real people have bills to pay.
Then we got to voting in new officers, treasurer, asst treasurer, secretary, asst secretary, vice chair, area chairs, and finally, we voted in Jeane Forester as state party chairman. That got us up to a little after 2PM and then we called it a day and adjourned. I got back home just around 5PM. Stupid Beast was glad to see me.
Friday, January 27, 2017
The Legend of Tarzan 2016
This flick hit the theaters back in July 2016. Publicity work must have been pretty bad, I never heard of it until I did a search for "Tarzan" on Netflix. I'm an old Tarzan fan, got started reading my father's collection of Tarzan novels in grade school. I have seen most, perhaps all, of the Tarzan movies and TV shows going all the way back to the Johnny Weissmuller movies. This was a medium speed Tarzan movie, not great, but watchable.
The cast were names I had never heard of, but they did a reasonable job working against a faint to flaky plot and really terrible continuity situation. The movie starts up with a very British lord John Clayton in London, does flashbacks to a boy Tarzan being raised by Kala the she-ape deep in the jungle, pops back to the present (1890) flashes back to a young Tarzan whipping Kerchak hand to paw, pops forward to the same young Tarzan meeting Jane, and so it goes. The flashback scenes are cute and all, but the constant flashing back and forth is confusing, and when laid on top of a weak plot yields a confusing movie.
The soundman was only fair to poor, a lot of Jane's lines were unintelligible to me. The cameraman is still turning the lights off, yielding a pure black scene with just a hint of someone's white face floating around in the blackness. They have a lot of pretty nicely done CGI animals, lions, great apes, wild buffalo, elephants and suchlike. They have a stern wheel river steamer that looks pretty good although it is almost certainly CGI.
Tarzan is properly ripped, has a good six pack abs. He looks a little too skinny for the part, I expect Tarzan to be built like Schwarzenegger. This Tarzan doesn't really look strong enough to rassle with great apes and live to tell about it. We don't see Tarzan without his shirt until halfway thru the movie, and he never does get down to the traditional loincloth, he is wearing pants right up the the end of the flick.
Jane is nicely played, young, beautiful and tough. She spits in the bad guy's face, and later escapes from the bad guy's river steamer by diving over the side into crocodile infested waters, while still wearing the ankle length white dress she was wearing when captured. We never learn just how she avoided or dealt with the crocs. We see her climbing out of the muddy river with the white dress now stained river-mud-color. A few scenes later the dress goes back to being white, and still later back to river-mud-color.
Overall, not too bad, at least for us dyed in the wool Tarzan fans.
The cast were names I had never heard of, but they did a reasonable job working against a faint to flaky plot and really terrible continuity situation. The movie starts up with a very British lord John Clayton in London, does flashbacks to a boy Tarzan being raised by Kala the she-ape deep in the jungle, pops back to the present (1890) flashes back to a young Tarzan whipping Kerchak hand to paw, pops forward to the same young Tarzan meeting Jane, and so it goes. The flashback scenes are cute and all, but the constant flashing back and forth is confusing, and when laid on top of a weak plot yields a confusing movie.
The soundman was only fair to poor, a lot of Jane's lines were unintelligible to me. The cameraman is still turning the lights off, yielding a pure black scene with just a hint of someone's white face floating around in the blackness. They have a lot of pretty nicely done CGI animals, lions, great apes, wild buffalo, elephants and suchlike. They have a stern wheel river steamer that looks pretty good although it is almost certainly CGI.
Tarzan is properly ripped, has a good six pack abs. He looks a little too skinny for the part, I expect Tarzan to be built like Schwarzenegger. This Tarzan doesn't really look strong enough to rassle with great apes and live to tell about it. We don't see Tarzan without his shirt until halfway thru the movie, and he never does get down to the traditional loincloth, he is wearing pants right up the the end of the flick.
Jane is nicely played, young, beautiful and tough. She spits in the bad guy's face, and later escapes from the bad guy's river steamer by diving over the side into crocodile infested waters, while still wearing the ankle length white dress she was wearing when captured. We never learn just how she avoided or dealt with the crocs. We see her climbing out of the muddy river with the white dress now stained river-mud-color. A few scenes later the dress goes back to being white, and still later back to river-mud-color.
Overall, not too bad, at least for us dyed in the wool Tarzan fans.
Thursday, January 26, 2017
Waterboard 'em enough and they will say anything you want
Interrogating prisoners is something of an art. Coercion, whether the 3rd degree methods of modern police to real old fashioned medieval torture, is a deal between the interrogators and the subject. Talk and it will stop hurting. Most subjects understand this. And, most subjects want it to stop hurting, and so they talk. They will lie their heads off and say anything the interrogators want them to say.
For criminal police work, where all they have to do is make the subject say " I confess" this probably works. For military intelligence work where we want the location of enemy troops, supplies, other assets, or operational plans, or names of leaders and agents, targets for airstrikes, success of past attacks, or size of military units, it's not so effective. The subject, under duress, will invent answers to the questions. This defeats the purpose of interrogation, by filling the intelligence files with nonsense.
So I am not in sympathy with president Trump's call to waterboard more subjects. I don't think you get useful intelligence this way. CIA used to have some pretty good interrogators. They got Khalid Sheik Mohammad to sing like a canary. Then came the great CIA shakeup over black sites, waterboarding, VHS tapes of interrogation. I wonder if CIA has anyone left who can interrogate effectively. Or would dare to do so from fear of prosecution.
What we ought to do is take more prisoners. Obama liked killing 'em rather than taking 'em alive, probably to try to empty out Gitmo. Seal Team Six had Bin Laden at their mercy, they had plenty of airlift, they should have cuffed him and flown him out. Rather than calling in an airstrike, send troops in by helicopter to capture alive as many as possible. Take the prisoners to Gitmo and grill 'em medium rare. Do fancy televised trials for the higher ups like Bin Laden.
For criminal police work, where all they have to do is make the subject say " I confess" this probably works. For military intelligence work where we want the location of enemy troops, supplies, other assets, or operational plans, or names of leaders and agents, targets for airstrikes, success of past attacks, or size of military units, it's not so effective. The subject, under duress, will invent answers to the questions. This defeats the purpose of interrogation, by filling the intelligence files with nonsense.
So I am not in sympathy with president Trump's call to waterboard more subjects. I don't think you get useful intelligence this way. CIA used to have some pretty good interrogators. They got Khalid Sheik Mohammad to sing like a canary. Then came the great CIA shakeup over black sites, waterboarding, VHS tapes of interrogation. I wonder if CIA has anyone left who can interrogate effectively. Or would dare to do so from fear of prosecution.
What we ought to do is take more prisoners. Obama liked killing 'em rather than taking 'em alive, probably to try to empty out Gitmo. Seal Team Six had Bin Laden at their mercy, they had plenty of airlift, they should have cuffed him and flown him out. Rather than calling in an airstrike, send troops in by helicopter to capture alive as many as possible. Take the prisoners to Gitmo and grill 'em medium rare. Do fancy televised trials for the higher ups like Bin Laden.
Wednesday, January 25, 2017
God Speed Mary Tyler Moore
The TV is carrying news of her death at age 80. She put on a lot of really good TV in her day. I watched a lot of it. There isn't anything nearly as good on TV these days. God Speed.
Tuesday, January 24, 2017
Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals
DACA is an Obama executive order to the immigration folks to ease off deportment of young illegal aliens who were brought into the US by their parents when they were small children. The Wall St Journal runs two letters to the editor today, one advocating that president Trump continue the policy, and one advocating ending it.
Cool and all. But isn't this a matter for Congress? Someone ought to submit a bill to Congress to make DACA the law of the land. I'd expect it to have a good chance of passage. And then the argument would be over.
Cool and all. But isn't this a matter for Congress? Someone ought to submit a bill to Congress to make DACA the law of the land. I'd expect it to have a good chance of passage. And then the argument would be over.
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