Now blogging at diego's weblog. See you over there!

bloggers meeting

Back from the dublin bloggers get-together, where I met David, Karlin, Tom, Diane and her husband, Antoin, Jamie, Damien and Deidre (I remember their URLs but I must have heard wrong, because they don't work :)) among others. We need a list of some sort, if you were there please drop a comment with your URL in this entry! (BTW, Bernie didn't make it).

Got there about ten to eight and had to leave around ten, and most were still there. One thing that was funny (or weird. Or scary. Depends on how you look at it) was that we could recognize each other in some cases by URL rather than by name. The exchange would go "Hi I'm so and so. Ah nice to meet you. And what's your URL? oh, it's such and such. Ah, yes, I read you!". Since [at least there's the illusion that] you already know the other person in part, the conversation moves much faster. Next time, we all need a way to exchange URLs reliable. Tags or cards would do, but a high-tech solution would be better. :)

And if only seating arrangements were as flexible as a chain of links to maintain a live conversation... :-)

PS: thanks to Karlin for organizing it! I was great fun. Hopefully we can make it something more regular, say, once a month...

but the cold war's over... right?

If you feel like a few chills up your spine, instead of watching some cheap horror flick you can simply read this summary of the status of US Nuclear Forces for this year, published in the bulletin of atomic scientists. Some nuggets of information from the report follow (this is all public information regarding US nuclear force status, btw). The US has:

• 384 submarine launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), Trident I and II types (about half of the operational strategic nuclear arsenal) are deployed in 16 nuclear-powered submarines (2880 warheads in total).
  
• 500 Minuteman III missiles with one or three warheads each deployed on land
  
• There are three types of nuclear-delivery capable bombers: B-2B (15-20), B-52H (around 100) and B-1B (Although according to the report the B-1B wasn't supposed to be nuclear-capable, there are over 90 of those in operation and close to "retirement"). The bombers can deploy gravity bombs, "bunker-buster" nuclear weapons and cruise missiles (the latter only on the B-52H platform).
  
• Over 1,100 non-strategic nuclear weapons (ie., tactical nuclear weapons. The bombs dropped Hiroshima and Nagasaki qualify as tactical).

Which gives a grand total of some 7650 warheads, give or take a few, including strategic and tactical devices.

According to the report they are deactivating 50 MX/Peacekeeper ICBMs (which are relics pretty much). Sounds like good news? Not really. The warheads will be redeployed to Minuteman III missiles.

Also interesting are the time-frames established for "retirement" of some of the technologies, warheads and delivery platforms (ie., missiles, planes, submarines, etc), and plans for their upgrade and/or replacement.

And I don't even want to know what's on the Russian arsenal...

dublin bloggers meeting

Dublin bloggers will meet tonight at 8 pm (in the Central Hotel). I'm going of course :). Here it rained all day today (and it's cold too) but it looks that the evening/night might be dry, which is good news for me since I prefer walking.

SCO v. Linux cont'd

This Salon article has some good comment and analysis on the SCO-Linux lawsuit. More speculation about why SCO would do this (along the much-discussed lines of "they're desperate" and/or "they want to force IBM into acquiring them"), but mainly background on how the lawsuit came about and opinions from others in the community.

mars express on its way

I guess that since fast-food culture calling an interplanetary mission 'mars express' was coming at some point... (but doesn't it matter that it will take more than six months to get there?) the mission left for Mars yesterday, featuring both an orbiter and a lander. It will be interesting!