Category: Technology

India Reopens Blogging

Indian security officials are declaring that their blocking of blogs has proven counterproductive, and they have reopened many blocked sites in India. I am curious if you can get to The Jawa Report and others now from there.

CAUTION: You can tell that Capitalism is winning quite handily over Communism in India, turn on your pop up blockers before you follow this link folks!

The clampdown on blogging following 7/11 has been revoked not because the blogging community expressed unhappiness at the restriction, but intelligence agencies pointed out that the ban was limiting their scope of investigations into the 7/11 Mumbai train blasts, which claimed nearly 200 lives.

With the ban revoked, investigating agencies have started keeping a close tab on online chat rooms and blogs for any “circumstantial evidence” linked to the serial blasts. The restriction on blogging, which was imposed immediately after the blasts, was lifted about ten days ago.

An intelligence official involved in cybertracking of clues linked to 7/11 said, “The clampdown on a few sites was invoked as banned organisations were found to be using chat rooms and blogs to send messages

Space Shuttle, STS-121 Returns SAFELY!

The Space Shuttle took the first window of opportunity and fired a burn to de-orbit about fifty minutes ago. STS-121 is on a re-entry path to Florida and Kennedy Space Center atd the Cape, and should touch down about 8:16 CDT. Update: Shuttle lands safely.

UPDATE: The Shuttle Landed Safely STS-121 and our astronauts are safely home! 

From contributor Aknot in Florida:

I had the TV on to watch the Shuttle land and heard that they changed runways. It was arriving from the south over the Yucatan and Cuba. I ran outside in time to hear the double sonic-boom. Pretty impressive living in Tampa and hearing the sonic booms for the first time. Three launches viewed (one night-time), double sonic boom, and I saw the Shuttle/747 combo flying overhead while enjoying a day at Epcot.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Space shuttle Discovery and its crew of six returned to Earth through overcast skies Monday, ending a successful mission that put NASA back in the space station construction business.

Discovery landed at Kennedy Space Center at 9:14 a.m. in only the second shuttle flight since the 2003 Columbia disaster.

“Welcome back Discovery and congratulations on a great mission,” Mission Control told shuttle commander Steven Lindsey after Discovery rolled to a stop.

Continue reading “Space Shuttle, STS-121 Returns SAFELY!”

Breaking: C-802 Missle hit Israeli Ship, not a UAV drone

Fox news has just reported that it was a Chinese C-802 missle that hit the Israeli warship killing two sailors, while it was on-duty blockading the harbor in Lebanon. The two other missing sailors have not yet been found. The Israeli ship was partly towed to it’s harbor after the hit, but halfway through the trip managed enough repairs to start moving on its own engines.

Final Update: Counter Terrorism Blog has a detailed analysis of the C-802 and its capabilities.  Also they note that Israel has deployed Patriot missles, although it’s not likely that they would be effective against this type of missile launched against a ship across water, as noted below these missles have a 98% hit rate vs. ships.

Israel has deployed three PAC-2 Patriot missile batteries near Haifa, “aimed at intercepting missiles launched at the area.” But it is unlikely the PAC-2 can intercept the smaller rockets, such as the Raad, which are being launched against the city. The Patriot systems are designed to shoot down aircraft, and have been modified to shoot down larger, medium range missiles such as SCUDs. “Patriot Advanced Capability-2 (PAC-2) is a surface-to-air guided missile defense system designed to detect, target, and destroy incoming ballistic missiles flying three to five times the speed of sound,” reports MissileThreat.com.

The PAC-2s are being deployed to intercept longer-range missiles (ballistic missiles fired from deeper in Lebanese territory, or perhaps Syria) and to take down UAVs launched from the Lebanese coast.

Continue reading “Breaking: C-802 Missle hit Israeli Ship, not a UAV drone”

Black Tuesday comes next week

The folks at ISC remind us that Black Tuesday comes next week with new security bulletins and patches coming from Microsoft. If you have Gates Gear remember to patch next week.

Published: 2006-07-07,
Last Updated: 2006-07-07 22:56:04 UTC by John Bambenek (Version: 1)

Microsoft sent out the Advance Notice for Black Tuesday.  In short, 4 Windows patches and 3 Office patches with some in both categories being critical updates.  Stay tuned here on Tuesday for our monthly breakdown of the patches and the vulnerabilities they remediate.

Great Recovery 1stcom!

I wanted to take a moment and thank my Hosting Company, 1stcom.com for a great recovery effort over a holiday weekend. They had a catastrophic failure of some drives but were able to get me back up, running and fully recovered. Just wanted to take a moment to thank them for the great effort, it’s well-appreciated

main3.jpgI wanted to take a moment and thank my Hosting Company, 1stcom.com for a great recovery effort over a holiday weekend. They had a catastrophic failure of some drives but were able to get me back up, running and fully recovered. Just wanted to take a moment to thank them for the great effort, it’s well-appreciated.

Weekend Nuclear Energy Roundup

In an interesting twist on some of Atomic Rod’s ideas, the Russians now plan to build portable floating nuclear reactors as reported by Der Spiegel. It’s workable, since these are reactors just like the ones Russian Subs and Icebreakers currently use.

floating reactor.jpgIn an interesting twist on some of Atomic Rod‘s ideas, the Russians now plan to build portable floating nuclear reactors as reported by Der Spiegel. It’s workable, since these are reactors just like the ones Russian Subs and Icebreakers currently use. The drawback as Der Spiegel points out is that the reactors use U-235 weapons-grade Uranium in their fuel rods. If you want to use old-school permanent disposal techniques, (in other words put it where nobody could get at it again,) it does propose novel solutions. You could fill the barge with cement and drop it in the bottom of the Marianas trench. However new-school is that any uranium is much too valuable to dispose of permanently, it’s better to recycle it.

The concept is amazing. The new ship could be anchored along any coastline where there is no threat of a tsunami or hurricane. All local engineers have to do is attach a few cables and then the magic arrives: “the reactors are activated — and there is light.” Voilá, the world’s mobile, boat-based nuclear reactor for the production of civilian power. That, at least, is how an enthusiastic Evgeny Kuzin, who works for the Russian utility company Malaya Energetika, pitches the ambitious project.

Speaking of Rod Adams you can catch him here at his blog, Atomic Insights with a new podcast from Friday on Canada’s potential energy future.

Also, over at NEI Nuclear notes, a very detailed piece refuting Greenpeace’s “Chernobyl’s just waiting to happen here in America” hysteria with solid facts on nuclear safety.

Continue reading “Weekend Nuclear Energy Roundup”

Nuclear power in layman’s terms

There’s a great article on energy, energy sources, and why we should build more nuclear energy plants in the US over at Kuro5hin, check it out.

You’ll also hear people moan about a fuel shortage with nuclear: except that there is none. The Indians use thorium successfully in their nuclear design, and there is a lot of that around. Additionally, all of the uranium stores are not sitting in countries where you would fund Wahhabi Islam by mining it. The U.S.A., for one, could become largely self-sufficient energy wise. Now how’s that for an energy national security policy?

At the end it wraps up by repeating the theme you can find here in Energy Part III, originally published at American Thinker.

Missile Defense Agency

it’s our right to protect ourselves, our allies, their neighbors, ships and aircraft in the area, or even endangered species it might pass near. In other words, we should shoot it down with any path near Japan, or any other allies.

With North Korea readying to launch it’s new Taepodong II missle, the nuclear table stakes just raised. On Tuesday, North Korea asserted that it has the right to test fire the missle with theoretical capability to reach the US, and I am going to agree with them.

Continue reading “Missile Defense Agency”

Democratic Strategy Underwhelmingly Embarrassing

So it’s quite telling that the Democratic Leadership dropped their election strategy for ’06 late on a Friday afternoon at the beginning of silly season.

We are about to start into silly season — in traditional news days, this was the season when there wasn’t much going on. This is because across America folks are out of school, on vacation, bar-b-queing, and planning weddings. Americans aren’t paying much attention to the news, and shortly there isn’t going to be a lot of news to report – Congress will be out of session, and politicos will be on vacation as well. 

 In times now gone forever, the hot, lazy days of summer were for stories on UFO investigations, top reporters interviewing psychics, and the yellow press resorting to headlines like this:

“Boy Trapped in Freezer Eats Own Foot to Survive!”

 Another news tradition of the beltway crowd is to dump bad or embarrassing news late on a Friday afternoon, in the hopes that something will overwhelm it before Monday. Besides that, American’s don’t much watch the news on weekends – it’s a way of downplaying bad things.

Continue reading “Democratic Strategy Underwhelmingly Embarrassing”

Newt takes on Greenpeace and Global Warming

Newt Gingrich exposes Greenpeace anti-nuclear energy demagogery in this soundbite. Next he takes on global warming here.

winning the future.jpgNewt Gingrich exposes Greenpeace anti-nuclear energy demagogery in this soundbite. In the sidebar at Newt’s site are more audio commentaries, try the one on global warming as well. From the Greenpeace memo:

 “Fill in alarmist and armageddonist factoid here”