100 SUNS: documented nuclear testing

Between July 1945 and November 1962 the United States is known to have conducted 216 atmospheric and underwater nuclear tests. 100 SUNS documents the era of visible nuclear testing, the atmospheric era, with 100 photographs drawn by Michael Light from the archives at Los Alamos National Laboratory and the U.S. National Archives in Maryland. It includes previously classified material from the clandestine Lookout Mountain Air Force Station based in Hollywood, whose film directors, cameramen, and still photographers were sworn to secrecy.

books

Culture

open XML

Microsoft Corporation plans a formal standard for its Office productivity applications and Ecma International accepted the Microsoft application. Ecma created Technical Committee 45 (TC45) to produce a formal standard of office productivity applications which is compatible with the Office Open XML Formats.

The Open XML standard will make Office compatibility easier for competing desktop application suites such as Sun Microsystems branded StarOffice and OpenOffice.org. Microsoft released Office 2003 schemas in late 2003. In June, 2005 the company said they planned to make the new XML file formats the default in Office "12" and available to anyone under a royalty-free license.

microsoft

open xml

iran's nuke program got help

The Iranians have been working on a nuclear bomb since 2000. Did the Clinton Administration sign off on a CIA operation that gave the Iranians a false set of firing instructions? What this did however was to give Iran the know-how to move on with their nuclear bomb program. The CIA program was called Operation Merlin, in which the CIA was to give flawed blueprints to Iran. The operation had a Russian go-between, but that person tipped the Iranians off to the flaws.

This operation was to have no known ties to the CIA. But why go get an agent from Russia when the Iranians were already getting help from the Russians to develop a nuclear bomb? Botched.

The intelligence community has been hit hard with revelations from whistle-blowers who may have been spied on themselves. Can the intelligence community recover? Maybe not completely. Can the answer be that difficult? Is the problem with the people or is it the times? Are we so full of leakers and traitors, that the answer is for the intelligence community to turn on itself?

We need leadership.

Iraq

News and politics

bird flu at the doorstep of Turkey

A child from the same family of eastern Turkey died from the bird flu. The virus has killed 74 people so far. The dead children (3) lived in a remote rural district of eastern Turkey near the Armenian and Iranian borders, in close proximity with poultry -- just like the east Asian victims.

He said the authorities had prepared a leaflet for locals detailing the precautionary measures they should take against the spread of bird flu and this was being distributed. Samples from Turkish patients were being analyzed in Britain.

bird flu

Current events

interesteching

22% Rougly one out of five users lost a mobile device in 2005
74% Three out of four corporate telephony lines will be IP-based by 2009
90% Nine out of ten major U.S. companies will test or use VoIP this year, up from 75% in 2005
$24.6B Global spending on IT security services in 2009
$81B Total server market in 2011, up from $49.8 billion in 2004
$329B Total annual online retail sales in 2010, up from $172 billion in 2005

Sources: Forrester Research
Gartner
IDC
Radicati Group

technology

News

gdp rise of 4.1 percent

The Commerce Department reported Wednesday that the gross domestic product, the nation's total output of goods and services, rose at an annual rate of 4.1 percent in the July-September quarter. It was the fastest pace of growth in 1 1/2 years. The new figure demonstrated that the economy kept expanding at a strong pace during the summer, led by solid increases in consumer demand, especially for autos, and business investment.

The third quarter performance was up substantially from a 3.3 percent GDP growth rate in the April-June quarter and was the best showing since the economy expanded at a 4.3 percent rate in the first three months of 2004. The economy had originally been estimated to have grown at a 3.8 percent rate in the third quarter, a figure that was revised up to 4.3 percent last month and now revised slightly lower to 4.1 percent.

Economics

USA

could this picture be any more stupid?

Joseph Wilson and Valerie Plame should have known better than to have this picture taken let alone published.... and of all places Time Magazine.

He looks like a husband that's wanting someone to get him out of the mess he's in and she looks like she just woke up with a grand champion hangover or she is still drunk. Maybe she was drunk when this picture was taken. Maybe they just always use poor judgement.

time magazine

current events

Federal ID card rules will apply to contractors

Under a soon-to-be- issued rule in the Federal Acquisition Regulations, agencies will have to vet contractors through the same processes they put employees before issuing identification cards. The Federal Identity Credentials Committee the interim rule should be issued in the Federal Register soon. The idea is to plug a security hole. The CIO Council's IT Workforce Committee sponsored a forum in Washington, D.C. where the topic of due diligence for contractor personnel cam up for discussion.

Security