Energy, Security

Diesel converts to water

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You know the whole water into wine thing? Well, I hate to bring it up but what else comes to mind when the Army announces that their diesel-powered Humvees are going to be outfitted with technology that can return water from diesel exhaust? Just filter the exhaust through some “proprietary carbon filters” and put the results into a handy container in the Humvee and add a spigot. Pretty darn amazing idea, if you ask me, and apparently just one of the innovative things that happens when the chips are down in a desert and water is considered a truly precious commodity, yet diesel fuel is all around. Or as someone in logistics might put it “if you carry fuel, you already have your water”. Well, unless you run out of “proprietary” filters. But I digress…

once you taste the water, you realize the potential.

Great marketing slogan, because before I tasted the water I just thought it would be a convenient place to dump toxic waste from warships and munitions. To be frank, the risk equation being used here to justify the research is simple. The more complicated the supply logistics the more vulnerable the soldiers, so the brass are looking for ways to shore-up a water supply chain. Cleaning domestic superfund base sites? Civilians are vulnerable mostly, so no pressing need for the military to invest in new technology there…remember, the groundwork for the Internet was started by a project funded by the US military to help maintain the command structure during war.

Now, let’s say the situation with risk is different — contaminated water is all around, AND diesel refineries are nowhere to be found. Enter engines designed for bio-fuels? Hmm, maybe the next war, although the use of bio-diesel is known to lower the risk of damage from IEDs since it is less combustible. It also might make the water taste more like yesterday’s freedom fries.

In the meantime fuels like bio-diesel remain non-combat experiments and the ability to recycle the exhaust sounds like a cool use (pun intended) of energy tech that I hope makes it to the civilian world soon.

Security

Muscle IDs

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Anyone who’s fired a pistol knows that they get a “muscle memory” from the grip. Well, the latest biometrics are being considered for pistols in order to authorize the person who grabs the grip, based on their muscles. Grab a hold of one and fire a few rounds and it should be able to distinguish you from anyone else.

Makes a lot of sense, and it could perhaps be useful in other high-risk pursuits where you need to get a grip on things (to protect assets, reduce vulnerabilities, or mitigate threats…or a combination of the three). The only down-side, of course, is that if you become tied to the device meant to be disabled without you…well, you are actually now part of the device and the risk that goes with it. So if you are the only person who can fire the pistol, then you may be actually forced to use it in a way that you wouldn’t if it could be used without you. The risk matrix changes. It never goes away. Anyway, an interesting update to the possibilities out there for authorization controls.

Security

FindU CallSign Database

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This is rather impressive. If you want to see the APRS info for your area, check out the query site. Very handy for Business Continuity portals…on the same note, I just added a weather plugin to the right. The best use might be if it can detect the weather of the person (IP) visiting, but for now it gives you a window into one of the environments I live in. If I’m feeling ambitious I might also add in a few surveillance images.

Poetry, Security

Site Maintenance

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Well, I recently posted some security fixes to the photo log (plog) portion of the site and now WordPress has announced their 2.0 release is official, which means I’ll be doing some fiddling over the next few hours to test and perhaps migrate the site. I’m excited about all the new features, but what really caught my eye was the little slogan at the bottom of the WordPress site:

Code is Poetry

Excellent! Although if it were up to me I would suggest they change this to “Secure Code is Poetry”, since a lot of code is just plain crap, and crap really isn’t poetry at all. I mean you have to draw the line somewhere, right?

the poetry of information security