The FCC’s enforcement actions against illegal jammers continues, IN Compliance magazine has the details, Commission issues citations for marketing of cell phone jammers.
American Antiquarian Society Receives Save America’s Treasures Grant
The American Antiquarian Society located in Worcester Massachusetts has been awarded a $77,557 grant. From the announcement:
The American Antiquarian Society’s collection of early American imprints (pre-1876) is recognized as the most comprehensive for this period and includes the first books printed in the colonies. Funds would support conservation treatment with an emphasis on retaining the original character and physical appearance of the materials. Fragile volumes would also be housed in lignin-free clamshell boxes.
Congratulations!
Hopedale in Some Newspaper Stories
I spotted a couple of interesting mentions of Hopedale in newspaper stories via my saved Google news searches. The first is an article in the Cape Cod Times by Rev. Robinson:
The theory of nonviolence has its roots in the ethic of Jesus, but as a technique for social transformation, it began with a Universalist minister, Adin Ballou, in the mid-19th century here in Massachusetts. Ballou was the spiritual head of a utopian community in Hopedale, located in the Blackstone River Valley. He was a Christian socialist, and when many of his fellow socialists were advocating violent means in the struggle against capitalism, Ballou championed nonviolence.
Ballou was Leo Tolstoy’s favorite American author, and Tolstoy took up Ballou’s ideas of nonviolence. Mohandas Gandhi, in turn, read Tolstoy, and Martin Luther King Jr. read Gandhi.
I was not aware of the Rev. Ballou’s influence on Tolstoy’s thinking.
The other story is sad, it’s by Joe O’Connell of the Milford Daily News, “Developmentally disabled from Hopedale clubhouse to protest cuts to clubhouses”. It makes me sad that we are reducing our level of help to our most vulnerable citizens.
The FCC’s Herculean Task
The FCC has a nearly impossible duty that seems to be growing out of control, stopping the sale and usage of signal jammers. Somehow I missed the story when it was in the FCC daily digest last month but this week I saw it in this article from IN Compliance magazine.
Last month the FCC issued a citation to Everbuying.com for selling GPS jammers, FCC Citation No.: C201132340002. Clearly the Chinese owners of the site have no intention of complying with US law since they are still offering many different jammers at Everbuying.com. All of the products offered on those two pages are illegal to import, sell or use in the USA and most, if not all, other countries.
A Google Search for the product description from the citation yields 75,500 results and most of the top results are sites that will sell you the illegal device. I can not think of any legitimate use for a GPS jammer and the comments at DealExtreme’s Product Forum clearly show why people would buy these devices.
it’s great for stealing tracked trucks, and ‘sell’ them back latter
From Taylor73: My job uses a handheld device that has a L1 GPS device within it. Most of the time I’m pretty honest but every now and then I leave work early or might be late to where I’m supposed to be.
So, as far as I can see the people who buy and use these devices are either criminals or dishonest employees looking to screw over their employer. It seems to me that straight forward fairly simple statistical analysis of the data collected by the employer can discover the fraudulent activity of the employee. So I wouldn’t be surprised if Taylor73 is looking for a job in the near future.
Here are a few older posts of mine about jammers:
Feed pipe updated
I noticed an RSS feed for the Woonsocket Call today, so I’ve added it to my Blackstone River Valley Yahoo pipe.
Quack Miranda Warning
In case you aren’t aware, the Quack Miranda Warning takes the form of:
These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA. This product is not intended to treat, cure or prevent any disease.
This statement is required on health products when the manufacturer and seller either are unable or unwilling to show the product is useful the way normal health products show their usefulness. It provides the manufacturer/seller some immunity from legal liability. So to protect your health and/or prevent wasting money on useless products all you have to do is avoid buying any product that bears this warning. Be aware that, like all fine print meant to protect undeserved profits, this warning will be in a tiny font in the most obscure location of a page.
It used to be that you’d only see this warning on diet pills, weird vitamins and other things you’d ingest. This warning has worked so well at limiting liability that pretty much all useless products relating to health in any way shape or form now include the warning. Case in point, xZubi, the warning is in the smallest font at the bottom of the home page.
I find the easiest way to check for the warning is to search any suspect page for the phrase “evaluated by the FDA” (Firefox & Internet Explorer, press Control+F to search a page) . I hope this information helps you avoid wasting money or damaging your health, Happy New Year 2011.
Hooray for Vista UAC
Like most tech guys I provide technical support for a number of PCs belonging to family and friends. After two years of no malware infections on the Vista PCs, and multiple infections on XP PCs, I finally had my first Vista infection to clean up. My forensics found that the malware was a new variation of the System Tool 2011 executable contracted via OkCupid on Christmas morning. Because I’d taken advantage of all the User Account Control (UAC) features on the Vista PCs I support, the damage was minor and easily repaired.
My experiences over the past several years have taught me to not even bother trying to start removing malware using only the infected PC. I always open the infected PC’s case and attach its hard disk to my system with a SATA/IDE to USB 2.0 Adapter. Scanning the USB attached drive with Microsoft Security Essentials it found no problems. Sadly this is frequently the case for me, the bad guys are constantly evolving their malware, so there usually is a few days to a week between the malware release and when detection systems are updated.
Next I searched the drive for files that where updated or created within 48 hours of the infection being noticed. This found the malicious software and what turned out to be its only other damage a shortcut in the start menu’s startup group. At first I was puzzled by the small scale of the infestation because on XP/2K/98/95 PCs I’ve repaired it has always been much worse. So I updated Malwarebytes and had it check the drive for me. It only found the same two items as my time based search and while it was scanning it dawned on me that UAC had prevented this malware from getting its hooks deeply into the system.
I saved a copy of the malware in my quarantined collection then deleted it and its shortcut from the drive. Next I reassembled the Vista PC and booted it up, no problems showed up and a manual check of the registry found no trace of the bad stuff. Just to be certain I installed and ran Malwarebytes from all the user accounts and it found no problems. The final step was to check the internet history to figure out where the malware came from, this showed me that it came from either Facebook of OkCupid. Later research points strongly to the malware coming from OkCupid via an advertising feed. I gave the PC back to its owner and Vista is running fine again.
The last thing I needed to do was report the malware to the Microsoft Malware Protection Center so that they could update their detection system. I submitted it and received confirmation of receipt Mon 12/27/2010 1:25 AM. They acknowledged the malicious nature of the software and changes to detection where in testing on Tue 12/28/2010 9:26 PM. The case was closed and new definitions released on Wed 12/29/2010 12:17 AM, less than 48 hours after I submitted it.
More Information on the System Tool 2011 malware:
- Encyclopedia entry RogueWin32Winwebsec – Microsoft Malware Protection Center
- Screenshots and removal @ the Tee Support Blog
- Google Search
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Concentricity vs. Runout
What is the relationship between concentricity and runout? I keep seeing this question come up on the net and very few places seem to give the correct answer. Usually the discussion gets bogged down and confused by people adding in circularity and/or parallelism of 3D objects and somehow people end up saying that they are numerically equivalent or no conversion is possible.
The correct answer is concentricity is one half of the runout value. Don’t believe me, here’s how George Schuetz of Mahr Federal Inc. explains it in his paper “TIR Versus Concentricity for Coaxiality“.
Simply put, and ignoring any error in form or alignment, the TIR check bases its coaxiality reading on diameters, while the concentricity check calculates radii.
See, it’s diameter versus radius, one half. Still don’t believe it, see if this description makes more sense to you.
Although it is never written this way, concentricity is a bilateral measurement (+/-). Think about it, a shaft and attached disc centered at the origin with a concentricity error on the disc of +1 unit. When you rotate the shaft 180° the error is now -1 unit. However TIR is always a unilateral measurement, so the +/-1 becomes +2/-0.
Still not grokking this, then look at this 2D graphical representation (click image for full size).
Hopefully this clears up the confusion, and you get the basic geometric rule. Concentricity error is exactly one half of the runout error. Still don’t believe it, then try it for yourself in your favorite CAD program or with a physical 2D model.
2021-11-06: A reader has informed me that the error of concentricity is properly referred to as eccentricity. Since eccentricity is the antonym of concentricity that makes sense to me, but since the post has been up for 11 years I’m leaving the main body as is.
Colorado Hotels cited by FCC
I’ve never seen this type of action from the FCC before. On November 19th the FCC cited five hotels around Colorado for excess emissions in the aeronautic radio bands from their non-cable multichannel video programming distributor (MVPD) systems. FCC field personnel measured these problems between June 21st and August 6th. These hotels are spread all around the state so my guess is they all have the same brand or installation company for their MVPDs.
References
Paul Hutchinson's Blog 