`Developed by Dr. Harold Edgerton in the 1940s, the Rapatronic photographic technique allowed very early times in a nuclear explosion’s fireball growth to be recorded on film. The exposures were often as short as 10 nanoseconds, and each Rapatronic camera would take exactly one photograph.
A bank of four to ten or more such cameras were arranged at tests to record different moments of early fireball growth.
They provide technical information about the device’s disassembly. In some of the images shown below, accelerating bomb debris ‘splashes’ on a relatively slower growing fireball surface, creating irregularities and mottling.’
Cool nuclear fireball goodness. :)
m aTrIYKk Pbw`A London underground station was evacuated and part of a main east-west line closed in a security alert on Thursday, three weeks after suicide bombers killed 52 people on the transport network, police said. (Reuters)
This Reuters story was written while the police were detaining me in Southwark tube station and the bomb squad was checking my rucksack. When they were through, the two explosive specialists walked out of the tube station smiling and commenting: “Nice laptop.” The officers offered apologies on behalf of the Metropolitan police. Then they arrested me.’
`HotBits is an Internet resource that brings genuine random numbers, generated by a process fundamentally governed by the inherent uncertainty in the quantum mechanical laws of nature, directly to your computer in a variety of forms. HotBits are generated by timing successive pairs of radioactive decays detected by a Geiger-Müller tube interfaced to a computer. You order up your serving of HotBits by filling out a request form specifying how many random bytes you want and in which format you’d like them delivered. Your request is relayed to the HotBits server, which flashes the random bytes back to you over the Web. Since the HotBits generation hardware produces data at a modest rate (about 30 bytes per second), requests are usually filled from an “inventory” of pre-built HotBits. Once the random bytes are delivered to you, they are immediately discarded–the same data will never be sent to any other user and no records are kept of the data at this or any other site. (Of course, if you’re using the random data for cryptography or other security-related applications, you can’t be certain I’m not squirreling away a copy. But I’m not, really.)’
USEMjPYK GYvEBdMirrors and lasers and things.
`It all started one day with this guy, the origional Etherkiller, developed with a few misc parts to warn new users that the IT department is not to be messed with. You too can make one at home, connect the transmit pins of the RJ-45 to HOT on 110VAC and the recieve pins to Common. Modify to suit tase by varying pinout.
This led to some general discussion that this particular device really is in a class of devices, now called the “killers”, which need to be made.’
ymzBLGwHYBWodEW`I built a Mini-ITX based massively parallel cluster named PROTEUS. I have 12 nodes using VIA EPIA V8000, 800 MHz motherboards. The little machine is running FreeBSD 4.8, and MPICH 1.2.5.2. Troubles installing and configuring Free BSD and MPICH were few. In fact, there were no major issues with either FreeBSD or MPICH.
The construction is simple and inexpensive. The motherboards were stacked using threaded aluminum standoffs and then mounted on aluminum plates. Two stacks of three motherboards were assembled into each rack. Diagonal stiffeners were fabricated from aluminum angle stock to reduce flexing of the rack assembly.
The controlling node has a 160 GB ATA-133 HDD, and the computational nodes use 340 MB IBM microdrives in compact flash to IDE adapters. For file I/O, the computational nodes mount a partition on the controlling node’s hard drive by means of a network file system mount point.
Each motherboard is powered by a Morex DC-DC converter, and the entire cluster is powered by a rather large 12V DC switching power supply.
With the exception of the metalwork, power wiring, and power/reset switching, everything is off the shelf.’
aG yTbJeMVqgThree hours worth of physics videos, broken up into small chunks.
Another fat lady fipping out.
(2meg Windows Media)
see it here »
Some reported gets given shit by the news anchors when some guys walk buy while she’s going live to air in a canoe – showing the water is only ankle deep.
In another broadcast a bit later on there’s no canoe. :)
via Crooks and Liars.
(6meg and 1meg respectively, Windows Media)
sApSxg n g qFZ WsuhBp xb ShA hilarious article on Something Awful. With photos of the people who use these sorts of forums. :)
She’s angry because of illegal photographing trespassers. Or maybe they’re illegal trespassing photographers. Either way, SHE WANTS TO KNOW THEIR NAMES!
(4.2meg Windows Media)
`Jarvis had assigned her senior civics and economics class “to take photographs to illustrate their rights in the Bill of Rights,” she says. One student “had taken a photo of George Bush out of a magazine and tacked the picture to a wall with a red thumb tack through his head. Then he made a thumb’s-down sign with his own hand next to the President’s picture, and he had a photo taken of that, and he pasted it on a poster.”
According to Jarvis, the student, who remains anonymous, was just doing his assignment, illustrating the right to dissent. But over at the Kitty Hawk Wal-Mart, where the student took his film to be developed, this right is evidently suspect.
An employee in that Wal-Mart photo department called the Kitty Hawk police on the student. And the Kitty Hawk police turned the matter over to the Secret Service. On Tuesday, September 20, the Secret Service came to Currituck High.’
`A Best Buy customer threatened to kill a female employee Tuesday after complaining that he purchased a $1,300 computer, only to find wooden blocks inside the box once he got home.
According to police reports, the customer came to the store to make the complaint, but became enraged after being told nothing could be done for him. Police said the customer ignored two requests to leave the store, telling the manager, “What are you gonna do, big guy?”‘
`Enter your URL above to see what your site will look like in search-engine results, for instance www.evolt.org. See how search-engine friendly your site is, can the spider crawl it easily? Will it get good rankings?’
`Anti Bush campaign by 8 of the Webs Hottest Chicks!’
(11.5meg Windows Media)
I’m still playing with the backend of my site a bit. At the moment there are a few broken pages caused by dodgy strings I’m feeeding to PHP. I’m sorting it out as errors appear in my logs. Please bear with me. :)
Everything should be working in the next couple of days. If you find something broken, let me know.
Pictures from the Watchtower. They seem to be pretty happy that cities are being destroyed around them.
`Zoo director Chris Jackson said staff and visitors were “sickened” by the “senseless barbarity” of the rabbit’s death.
Staff detained one youth and handed him over to police, but two more got away. [..]
He said: “They looked at the alligators, then went into the children’s farm and looked at the rabbits. [..]”‘
`On July 15, 2005, the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Missouri announced the federal grand jury indictment of two Kentucky men on charges that they had conspired to distribute methamphetamine. The two Caucasian males had obtained ice methamphetamine from Mexican sources of supply in Omaha (NE) and were transporting the drugs to Louisville (KY) for distribution. The men concealed the ice methamphetamine in the body of a motorized, 3-foot hobby rocket connected by wires to the vehicle’s cigarette lighter (see Photo 12). If stopped by law enforcement officers en route to their destination, they planned to open the trunk of the vehicle, raise the methamphetamine-filled rocket into launching position using a string and pulley system, and launch the rocket into the air (see Photo 13).’
I’ve blogged this before, but this time there are photos of the setup. Scroll down.
`In the past, Edward Forchion has run for office to promote the legalization of marijuana.
This year, he is taking a more extreme stance in his bid for governor.
“This time it’s a whole angrier thing,” said Forchion, 41. “I’m openly advocating that my whole reason for running for office is to specifically give the finger to the attorney general, the Republicans and the Democrats.”
Forchion, of Browns Mills in Pemberton Township, is angry over being jailed for five months in late 2002 for filming ads advocating the legalization of marijuana while he was on probation for possession and intent to distribute the drug.’
`People have come up with bizarre, and often totally misguided, methods to prevent pregnancy over the years. Like wearing the testicles of a weasel on their thighs. Or amulets with desiccated cat livers or shards of bones. Some were advised to use elephant dung as a spermicide. And others used wads of seaweed as a female condom.’
`Police are chasing a con artist who used hypnotism to steal tens of thousands of dollars from bank tellers in Moldova – eastern Europe’s poorest country.
The suspect, identified as Vladimir Kozak, 49, is believed to have stolen more than $40,000 from bank employees unable to resist his powers, police said yesterday.
Kozak’s biggest haul took place last week, where police say he convinced a teller to give him $12,000.
His technique was to gain eye contact, put his targets in a hypnotic state and convince them to hand over cash.’
lvPV OiR pqjv W`Computer chips that store music just like an iPod could soon be built into girls’ breast implants.
One boob could hold an MP3 player and the other the woman’s entire music collection.’
That’s about all there is. No evidence is given to back up the claim, except for a photo of some large breasts.
`I hope you can help me with a problem I have with my godson. Last summer he visited me for two weeks and plans to return in July. When cleaning out the room he stays in, I found an unfinished correspondence to a chum of his in his hometown. In it he says he is going to our local pool to “scout out some camel toads.” (I believe that’s what it said, he had spilled some iced tea all over the desk when writing it, and it damaged a lot of papers.) I’m concerned he is doing drugs.’
bDFYx oVwUQRGYX rSj pJfY`The NSW Office of State Revenue (OSR) is taking a tough stance against Microsoft’s decision to make the enterprise edition of Windows Vista only available to companies that have signed on to its Software Assurance programme. The tax collection agency has declared it would rather switch desktop operating systems than lock itself into Microsoft’s licensing regime.
Delivering a presentation at the South East Asian Regional Computer Confederation (SEARCC 2005) in Sydney, OSR chief information officer Mike Kennedy and the agency’s manager of client services, Pravash Babhoota, confirmed they would start scoping for a move to a Linux desktop within six months.’
