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  • Adrian Bool

Adrian Bool

2 months ago

in I Can’t Wait for Google Latitude on the iPhone on dmiessler.com | grep understanding
Dream on with the background non-apple apps... :-( Unless you're willing to jailbreak it if course...

2 months ago

in I Wish More Roads Had These Signs [IMG] on dmiessler.com | grep understanding
I'm suprised this sign leaves an impression on an atheist such as yourself! ;-)

3 months ago

in The Real Reason Women Love Diamonds on dmiessler.com | grep understanding
I guess that explains the shortage of nookie during my life! I *hate* buying useless shit! ;-) Luckily my wife does not seem to be overly concerned but this particular aspect of my personality....

4 months ago

in The Real Reason Git is Great on dmiessler.com | grep understanding
Mmm, this guy could really do with looking at ZFS on Solaris (and hopefully working fully in OS X soon).

In built-compression, revision history via checkpoints, copy on write for disk efficiency and full checksums throughout the entire filing system. All ZFS features that thinks don't exist anywhere but git.

Sure, ZFS is not a revision control system - but he's not thinking of git in that way in his article. He's thinking of git as an FS, which ZFS naturally is today and will provide all the niceness (such as block level diff syncs) he wants for this projects.

I wish I could use ZFS for my OSX laptop now. Yesterday, after applying an update, /etc/authorization got screwed up - with the FS pointing to some completely wrong blocks on the filing system. This file is essential to the system booting up so it was noticed. It is hard to tell whether any other files were effected in a similar manner though - ZFS could easily detect such issues.

4 months ago

in Exploring Coffee on dmiessler.com | grep understanding
Why is having milk in your coffee unhealthy...?
1 reply
Daniel Miessler's picture
Daniel Miessler Not so much the milk, but most who add milk also add sugar.

5 months ago

in Why America Will Be Attacked Again Under Obama on dmiessler.com | grep understanding
But America did not only attack the terroists; they did not limit themselves Al Quaeda and Teliban forces principally in Afaganistan - they invaded Iraq which had no terriost associations at that time and was not at all involved with 9/11.

The equilivent with your dog analog would be that the dog bit you; you kicked the dog and then tore apart the cat that just happened to live in house next to the dog.
1 reply
cooperati's picture
cooperati "Saddam Hussein's Support for International Terrorism

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Iraq is one of seven countries that have been designated by the Secretary of State as state sponsors of international terrorism. UNSCR 687 prohibits Saddam Hussein from committing or supporting terrorism, or allowing terrorist organizations to operate in Iraq. Saddam continues to violate these UNSCR provisions.

In 1993, the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) directed and pursued an attempt to assassinate, through the use of a powerful car bomb, former U.S. President George Bush and the Emir of Kuwait. Kuwaiti authorities thwarted the terrorist plot and arrested 16 suspects, led by two Iraqi nationals.

Iraq shelters terrorist groups including the Mujahedin-e-Khalq Organization (MKO), which has used terrorist violence against Iran and in the 1970s was responsible for killing several U.S. military personnel and U.S. civilians.

Iraq shelters several prominent Palestinian terrorist organizations in Baghdad, including the Palestine Liberation Front (PLF), which is known for aerial attacks against Israel and is headed by Abu Abbas, who carried out the 1985 hijacking of the cruise ship Achille Lauro and murdered U.S. citizen Leon Klinghoffer.

Iraq shelters the Abu Nidal Organization, an international terrorist organization that has carried out terrorist attacks in twenty countries, killing or injuring almost 900 people. Targets have included the United States and several other Western nations. Each of these groups have offices in Baghdad and receive training, logistical assistance, and financial aid from the government of Iraq.

In April 2002, Saddam Hussein increased from $10,000 to $25,000 the money offered to families of Palestinian suicide/homicide bombers. The rules for rewarding suicide/homicide bombers are strict and insist that only someone who blows himself up with a belt of explosives gets the full payment. Payments are made on a strict scale, with different amounts for wounds, disablement, death as a "martyr" and $25,000 for a suicide bomber. Mahmoud Besharat, a representative on the West Bank who is handing out to families the money from Saddam, said, "You would have to ask President Saddam why he is being so generous. But he is a revolutionary and he wants this distinguished struggle, the intifada, to continue."

Former Iraqi military officers have described a highly secret terrorist training facility in Iraq known as Salman Pak, where both Iraqis and non-Iraqi Arabs receive training on hijacking planes and trains, planting explosives in cities, sabotage, and assassinations."

http://74.125.113.132/search?q=cache:1exHlH5IBs...

--------------------

AND

US Removes 550 Tons Of “Yellow Cake” Uranium From Iraq

ABC News

July 5, 2008

The last major remnant of Saddam Hussein’s nuclear program — a huge stockpile of concentrated natural uranium — reached a Canadian port Saturday to complete a secret U.S. operation that included a two-week airlift from Baghdad and a ship voyage crossing two oceans.

The removal of 550 metric tons of “yellowcake” — the seed material for higher-grade nuclear enrichment — was a significant step toward closing the books on Saddam’s nuclear legacy. It also brought relief to U.S. and Iraqi authorities who had worried the cache would reach insurgents or smugglers crossing to Iran to aid its nuclear ambitions.

What’s now left is the final and complicated push to clean up the remaining radioactive debris at the former Tuwaitha nuclear complex about 12 miles south of Baghdad — using teams that include Iraqi experts recently trained in the Chernobyl fallout zone in Ukraine.

“Everyone is very happy to have this safely out of Iraq,” said a senior U.S. official who outlined the nearly three-month operation to The Associated Press. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.

While yellowcake alone is not considered potent enough for a so-called “dirty bomb” — a conventional explosive that disperses radioactive material — it could stir widespread panic if incorporated in a blast. Yellowcake also can be enriched for use in reactors and, at higher levels, nuclear weapons using sophisticated equipment.

The Iraqi government sold the yellowcake to a Canadian uranium producer, Cameco Corp., in a transaction the official described as worth “tens of millions of dollars.” A Cameco spokesman, Lyle Krahn, declined to discuss the price, but said the yellowcake will be processed at facilities in Ontario for use in energy-producing reactors.

“We are pleased … that we have taken (the yellowcake) from a volatile region into a stable area to produce clean electricity,” he said.

The deal culminated more than a year of intense diplomatic and military initiatives — kept hushed in fear of ambushes or attacks once the convoys were under way: first carrying 3,500 barrels by road to Baghdad, then on 37 military flights to the Indian Ocean atoll of Diego Garcia and finally aboard a U.S.-flagged ship for a 8,500-mile trip to Montreal.

And, in a symbolic way, the mission linked the current attempts to stabilize Iraq with some of the high-profile claims about Saddam’s weapons capabilities in the buildup to the 2003 invasion.

Accusations that Saddam had tried to purchase more yellowcake from the African nation of Niger — and an article by a former U.S. ambassador refuting the claims — led to a wide-ranging probe into Washington leaks that reached high into the Bush administration.

Tuwaitha and an adjacent research facility were well known for decades as the centerpiece of Saddam’s nuclear efforts.

Israeli warplanes bombed a reactor project at the site in 1981. Later, U.N. inspectors documented and safeguarded the yellowcake, which had been stored in aging drums and containers since before the 1991 Gulf War. There was no evidence of any yellowcake dating from after 1991, the official said.

U.S. and Iraqi forces have guarded the 23,000-acre site — surrounded by huge sand berms — following a wave of looting after Saddam’s fall that included villagers toting away yellowcake storage barrels for use as drinking water cisterns.

Yellowcake is obtained by using various solutions to leach out uranium from raw ore and can have a corn meal-like color and consistency. It poses no severe risk if stored and sealed properly. But exposure carries well-documented health concerns associated with heavy metals such as damage to internal organs, experts say.

“The big problem comes with any inhalation of any of the yellowcake dust,” said Doug Brugge, a professor of public health issues at the Tufts University School of Medicine.

Moving the yellowcake faced numerous hurdles.

Diplomats and military leaders first weighed the idea of shipping the yellowcake overland to Kuwait’s port on the Persian Gulf. Such a route, however, would pass through Iraq’s Shiite heartland and within easy range of extremist factions, including some that Washington claims are aided by Iran. The ship also would need to clear the narrow Strait of Hormuz at the mouth of the Gulf, where U.S. and Iranian ships often come in close contact.

Kuwaiti authorities, too, were reluctant to open their borders to the shipment despite top-level lobbying from Washington.

An alternative plan took shape: shipping out the yellowcake on cargo planes.

But the yellowcake still needed a final destination. Iraqi government officials sought buyers on the commercial market, where uranium prices spiked at about $120 per pound last year. It’s currently selling for about half that. The Cameco deal was reached earlier this year, the official said.

At that point, U.S.-led crews began removing the yellowcake from the Saddam-era containers — some leaking or weakened by corrosion — and reloading the material into about 3,500 secure barrels.

In April, truck convoys started moving the yellowcake from Tuwaitha to Baghdad’s international airport, the official said. Then, for two weeks in May, it was ferried in 37 flights to Diego Garcia, a speck of British territory in the Indian Ocean where the U.S. military maintains a base.

On June 3, an American ship left the island for Montreal, said the official, who declined to give further details about the operation.

The yellowcake wasn’t the only dangerous item removed from Tuwaitha.

Earlier this year, the military withdrew four devices for controlled radiation exposure from the former nuclear complex. The lead-enclosed irradiation units, used to decontaminate food and other items, contain elements of high radioactivity that could potentially be used in a weapon, according to the official. Their Ottawa-based manufacturer, MDS Nordion, took them back for free, the official said.

The yellowcake was the last major stockpile from Saddam’s nuclear efforts, but years of final cleanup is ahead for Tuwaitha and other smaller sites.

The U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency plans to offer technical expertise.

Last month, a team of Iraqi nuclear experts completed training in the Ukrainian ghost town of Pripyat, which once housed the Chernobyl workers before the deadly meltdown in 1986, said an IAEA official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the decontamination plan has not yet been publicly announced.

But the job ahead is enormous, complicated by digging out radioactive “hot zones” entombed in concrete during Saddam’s rule, said the IAEA official. Last year, an IAEA safety expert, Dennis Reisenweaver, predicted the cleanup could take “many years.”

The yellowcake issue also is one of the many troubling footnotes of the war for Washington.

A CIA officer, Valerie Plame, claimed her identity was leaked to journalists to retaliate against her husband, former Ambassador Joe Wilson, who wrote that he had found no evidence to support assertions that Iraq tried to buy additional yellowcake from Niger.

A federal investigation led to the conviction of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice

http://patdollard.com/2008/07/ap-exclusive-us-r...

6 months ago

in How to Add Directory Colors to OS X’s Terminal on dmiessler.com | grep understanding
A related set of env variables I stumbled upon a day or two ago... very handy...

export GREP_OPTIONS='--color=auto'
export GREP_COLOR='1;33'

10 months ago

in A Disturbing Commercial Dealing With Race on danielmiessler.com | grep understanding

Why 'Disturbing'? A little depressing perhaps...

10 months ago

in A Disturbing Commercial Dealing With Race on dmiessler.com | grep understanding

Why 'Disturbing'? A little depressing perhaps...

12 months ago

in How-to Filter Google Results by Date on danielmiessler.com | grep understanding

You can also 'subscribe' to Google's beta search service. (I'm guessing it just dumps a cookie in your browser).


This allows you to see the results on a graphical timeline, among other formats, should that be a useful representation.


Check out, http://www.google.com/experimental/</p>

12 months ago

in How-to Filter Google Results by Date on dmiessler.com | grep understanding

You can also 'subscribe' to Google's beta search service. (I'm guessing it just dumps a cookie in your browser).


This allows you to see the results on a graphical timeline, among other formats, should that be a useful representation.


Check out, http://www.google.com/experimental/</p>

1 year ago

in This Video Rejuvenates the Soul on dmiessler.com | grep understanding

You'd think his dancing would improve a little during the journey ;)

1 year ago

in This Video Rejuvenates the Soul on danielmiessler.com | grep understanding

You'd think his dancing would improve a little during the journey ;)

1 year ago

in Safari’s #1 Annoyance: No Tab From The URL Bar on dmiessler.com | grep understanding

Safari and Firefox seem pretty much the same to me on this! Hitting tab whilst in the location bar takes me to the search field on both browsers.. What are you after..?

1 year ago

in Safari’s #1 Annoyance: No Tab From The URL Bar on danielmiessler.com | grep understanding

Safari and Firefox seem pretty much the same to me on this! Hitting tab whilst in the location bar takes me to the search field on both browsers.. What are you after..?

1 year ago

in Silly Question: Why Aren’t Russians Considered Asians? on danielmiessler.com | grep understanding

Carl, check out the Nationality entry at,


https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/us.html


On this subject, why does the USA refer to itself as the United States (or US) rather than the United States of America (or USA)?


From the above link,


conventional long form: United States of America
conventional short form: United States
abbreviation: US or USA


Is it just for brevity or is there something else to it?


aid

1 year ago

in Silly Question: Why Aren’t Russians Considered Asians? on dmiessler.com | grep understanding

Carl, check out the Nationality entry at,


https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/us.html


On this subject, why does the USA refer to itself as the United States (or US) rather than the United States of America (or USA)?


From the above link,


conventional long form: United States of America
conventional short form: United States
abbreviation: US or USA


Is it just for brevity or is there something else to it?


aid

1 year ago

in If McCain is the “Military” Candidate, Why Did Ron Paul, Who Wants to Pull Out of Iraq, Get More Campaign Contributions from the Military? on dmiessler.com | grep understanding

I guess because there are two sides to military - those who fight it and those who supply goods for it. Bush, McCain & friends are obviously more concerned about the interests of the second side.

1 year ago

in If McCain is the “Military” Candidate, Why Did Ron Paul, Who Wants to Pull Out of Iraq, Get More Campaign Contributions from the Military? on danielmiessler.com | grep understanding

I guess because there are two sides to military - those who fight it and those who supply goods for it. Bush, McCain & friends are obviously more concerned about the interests of the second side.

1 year ago

in Silly Question: Why Aren’t Russians Considered Asians? on dmiessler.com | grep understanding

It used to be a federation in the soviet days - USSR, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Russia is indeed a normal country these days.


Although Russia may have a large land mass in Asia, what proportion of the population are from the European part? I think it is quite large, hence us considering Russians European - as great many are!


Perhaps if you live in China or Korea you may consider Russians Asian. My wife is Korean; I've just asked her and she considers 'Russians' as Asian - even the Russian family that lives in our building who are from St Petersberg - who look completely European. For me, as a Brit, they're just plain European.


I guess for a country of that size you just can't label people with a continent in that way.


I'm a person, not a continent!!!


aid

1 year ago

in Silly Question: Why Aren’t Russians Considered Asians? on danielmiessler.com | grep understanding

It used to be a federation in the soviet days - USSR, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Russia is indeed a normal country these days.


Although Russia may have a large land mass in Asia, what proportion of the population are from the European part? I think it is quite large, hence us considering Russians European - as great many are!


Perhaps if you live in China or Korea you may consider Russians Asian. My wife is Korean; I've just asked her and she considers 'Russians' as Asian - even the Russian family that lives in our building who are from St Petersberg - who look completely European. For me, as a Brit, they're just plain European.


I guess for a country of that size you just can't label people with a continent in that way.


I'm a person, not a continent!!!


aid

1 year ago

in Signing with Initials on dmiessler.com | grep understanding

'Digital Rights Management'... Don't you currently feel sufficiently hated? ;-)

1 year ago

in Signing with Initials on danielmiessler.com | grep understanding

'Digital Rights Management'... Don't you currently feel sufficiently hated? ;-)

1 year ago

in The Best Reason I’ve Ever Seen For Outlawing Religion on danielmiessler.com | grep understanding

"She ain't goin' down to a bad place." Poor guy. It /is/ a piss take, yeah?

1 year ago

in The Best Reason I’ve Ever Seen For Outlawing Religion on dmiessler.com | grep understanding

"She ain't goin' down to a bad place." Poor guy. It /is/ a piss take, yeah?

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