Saturday, July 03, 2004

Channel News Asia:  Southern Oil Pipeline breached.  Unknown causes. 4:44:05 PM    Comment_ Trackback []

Water armor for cars.  Norwegian scientists have come up with a smart and cheap way of bullet proofing cars by lining the vehicles with flat tanks which, when filled with water, provide excellent protection against gun attack.  Each tank is thin, like a domestic radiator, made from plastic or light metal, and has several energy-absorbing carbon-fibre sheets stacked inside. afp 4:33:46 PM    Comment_ Trackback []

Xinhuanet:  China wants to censor the 220 billion (55% of the world's total) text messages sent annually in the country.  1:48:00 PM    Comment_ Trackback []

Feed Burner looks great!  Check out the services.  Nice! Smart Feed:  converts atom feeds to RSS (makes it compatible with any reader). Item Stats:  item by item analysis of feed usage (tracks hits and new subscribers). Summary Burner:  routes traffic from feeds through a site (enables teaser message). Amazon Burner:  Adds Amazon affiliate links to your feed content. Browser-Friendly Burner:  turns xml pages into something that is readable. Mobile Filter:  Optimizes your feed for mobile devices. Content-Type Burner:  changes the content type (geeks only) Convert Format Burner: 9 flavors of RSS. Feed Image Burner:  Add an image to your feed that helps it stand out. 10:46:24 AM    Comment_ Trackback []

Transneft runs the world's largest oil pipeline system.  ~48,000 km of pipelines in Russia.  You will hear about this company again. 10:21:37 AM    Comment_ Trackback []

Doc points me to an interview with Joe Biden, with this interesting quote (read the entire interview if you have the time): BIDEN:  The neocons are right: this is the first time stateless actors with no territory to protect, no interest in protecting individuals, capable of using modern technology, let alone nuclear weapons or weapons of mass destruction ... You don't need weapons of mass destruction. So the combination of technology, sophistication, laptop computers in a cave in Tora Bora. They can orchestrate that. We've never faced that before. TPM: Can I ask you a question? It seems that one of the shortcomings of the neoconservative worldview is their focus on states. BIDEN: Exactly right. Bingo. BIDEN:  The fundamental flaw --- forget flaw, the fundamental difference between Joe Biden, John Kerry on the one hand, and the neoconservatives on the other is that they genuinely believe --- and put it in the negative sense --- they do not believe it is possible for a sophisticated international criminal network that will rain terror upon a country, that has the potential to kill 3,000 or more people in a country, can exist without the sponsorship of a nation-state. Joe is on the right track.  Global guerrillas, a better name for what we are facing than non-state actors or transnational criminals, are the threat. Somebody should point him to my Global Guerrillas site, where I am providing a theoretical basis for policy formulation. 9:39:02 AM    Comment_ Trackback []

IHT.  NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer warned Friday that Afghanistan and Iraq were doomed to be failed states if the United States and the international community did not find a way to work together to save them. 7:41:01 AM    Comment_ Trackback []