*Sigh* U.S. "lawmakers" claim that the U.S. is too dependent on Russkiean rockets.

This is mind-warpingly stupid. Experts tell science and technology illiterates that US is too dependent on Russian rockets

Ya think? Now why could that possible be?...hmmm.

Since we mothballed Apollo we haven't had a real rocket development in the US. Why? Becuase short-sighted politicians from Reagan--whom Edward Teller infamously got him and his administration to to back the stooopid Space Defense Initiative(SDI)--to Obama there has been zero leadership on hard science initiatives.

Reagan was perhaps the most scientifically illiterate president ever; until GW Bush perhaps wrested the title away.

Why are lawmakers believing these all sceinced out geeks now? For the only reason they EVER listen to reason..it is less politically palatable to do otherwise. These Washington hacks that couldn't tell a meson from a double-decker bus terrorizing the streets of Boise, Idaho by running against traffic on Interstate 84, are now ready to listen to people that they cannot understand because it scores easy political points.

These are the same people that refuse to do anything substantive about the greatest threat to our existence; global climate change, yet when it comes to ceding rocketry to the Russians, are only all too happy to listen to another set of sciency geeky types to score easy political layups. This is--in a nutshell--what is really wrong with this country.

Global climate change? "The science is still out." (Duh-fuh?)

Big giant threat from Russian rocket superiority..a problem which was directly caused by those now tasked to bridge the gap. No wonder I have glaucatomous eyes. I think that my eyes are the relief valves that keep my head from exploding over obvious hypocrisies.

I firmly believe that there should be a basic level of scientific literacy that anyone running for any office where these matters are to be entrusted. Call it the SSATs(Scientific Scholastic Aptitude Test(s)) for aspiring politicos.

I take no joy in pointing out the lack of scientific literacy among our elected officials. It gives me great pains to expose them. Let's take William Jefferson(can you imagine the nerve?) Clinton's level of scientific literacy. I don't know what kind of creds you need to be a Rhodes Scholar, but apparently skills in mathematics and a high level of scientific literacy aren't part of that program. Clinton was so scientifically challenged that he had to get advisors to explain to him the likelihood of Richard Preston's pretty awful book "The Cobra Event" becoming manifest. I will give Clinton credit. He knew that he didn't know shit about science, and took the advice of real scientists to move a tiny chunk of his policy. "It's the economy, stupid" nothwithstanding. Politically savvy, maybe, but Clinton might have had a legacy if he had ascted on global climate change. His eight years of doing nothing of importance remain a terrible waste.

There are smart people in this country. Alas, very, very few of the best minds ever run for public office.

Bing and Firefox 30

Here's another tech. post. Sorry.

I have now switched to Bing as my search provider of choice. Why?

Google wants to know everything about me, you, and the other 7 billions of humans inhabiting this grossly overpopulated rock.

Firefox 30 now gets the nod as my default web browser. Why?

Google Chrome still doesn't really offer a way to set the cache at 5MB. That's where I have Firefox set. I would state that FF 30 loads pages faster as well, but I'm not currently well enough sighted to run the requisite tests to make that call. Yes, FF still uses egregious amounts of system RAM whilst running, but faithfully releases all those MB to the pool with the closure of the browser.

Google's newest version of their terms of use is appalling.

It's beginning to shape up as Google Services vs. Microsoft Bing Services for the soul of true computing.

I don't know what Apple is doing, as I still don't understand the appeal of tablets, and as for the iPhone, when it's $30 sans contact, I may give it a look. MP3 players are not worth more than 25USD. That's why I have two Sandisk Sansa Clip+s that I paid less than a combined 50USD. I picked up some 32GB micro-SD cards for 8USD ea., and I'm beholden to no xTunes bloatware and insane prices.

I am de-Amazoning as well. I buy less and less there, as other etailers commonly offer the products and services that I need and/or want for less cost.

The Mozilla Foundation is a great group of geeks. Microsoft now seems the lesser of all evils, and the earth still isn't round. A circle is round. The earth is perhaps best described as a slightly oblate spheroid...without getting all geometry happy.

The best thing that all this competition has done is offer you, me, us, wider choices of quality products from which to choose--and many are now, or will soon be--ostensibly free. Read those Privacy/Terms Of Use Statements.

Why am I still using Blogger? Now that, is a good question. I have written some decent blog scripts in Perl, but I can't see hosing a blog, and if I was to publish on my Comcast/Xfinity pages, my blog would have even less visibility than it does even now. That does seem more than a bit of a dodge. In fact, I do believe that it is. I can't fix all of my privacy ills in a day. There is no true anonymity on the 'Net. I really dislike this personality quirk. *shrugs*

That is all from the consumer end of my cave.

Hacking Tesla Motor car..

Yawn. Link to frivolity. This is a controlled event..or rather, non-event.

I think it would be fairly easy given enough time to hack into a true motor car. But Tesla has made all the rules, and most certainly made getting the 10K USD prize a most unlikely event against an opponent that has had time to harden itself against the particular type of hack that will bring home the 10K.

Tesla Motors should give the prize to any team that downs the vehicle's communication. It would be fun to see if Tesla's comm. could thwart a seriously intense DDoS(Distributed Denial of Service) attack. That would be much harder to defend against, esp. if a talented group could--I'd offer "would" here--take down Tesla's nascent version of SkyNet. There is no doubt that anything plugged into a network that is connected to an external source will be hacked. It is just a matter of time and technique. Remember when Macs "didn't get viruses?" I do not, but then security is quite important when working on enterprise level systems. Macs have been, will be, now, and forever, be hacked.

I know better, and I was once, while not hacked, taken over by ransomware that took me a day to totally clean out.

Tesla, you will be hacked, but not likely while you are watching. One possible way to defeat what is certain to be a hardened target is from the inside. Too easy.

DARPA is going to take a hot on their "Hack-Proof" drone software and hardware. If it flies, it is open to various forms of attack. Simple signal disruption, to a brute force EMP may not technically be hacking, but it'll kill a drone, or anything else with even a mild form of electronics. Enigma wasn't hackable, until it was. Every time one of these schemes is launched, sooner or later, they are compromised. Of course if DARPA finds the hacker, they'll really have only two choices: 1) Hire the hacker(s), or 2) Make them disappear.

I am pretty certain that I could build a decent EMP generator that would knock out a whole field of drones on the tarmac. Building a non-directional EMP generator is absurdly easy. One can envision that with proper shielding that the device could be made directional. Generating intense RF signals is hardly a secret. While I was at Uni. as an undergrad, we had BS sessions about building such things..and this circa 1980-81. In lieu of building powerful RF generators, we decided to toss together a whole series of cast off traffic lights and variably strobe them using plans that I sketched out in perhaps 15 minutes, and yes, I used the school's lithography equipment to make up a few boards to neaten up the wiring.

The EE undergrads were the hit of keg party light show spectaculars.

In the truest spirit of all-good-things-must-come-to-an-end, there was a dorm fire, and all our lighting gear was seized, never to be seen again. Many inquiries were made, but I suspect that some faculty member thought that our clever little experiment was just too cool to be given back. Traffic lights are much larger than they appear. All of ours were nearly a meter in height.

Of course we made other devices. I had just turned 18 when I entered Uni. In my six years there, I think I left some sort of mark.

I still cannot see well.

I