Groundbreaker project by NSA

In 2001 NSA transferred large number of employees from their pay-roll to private contractors. Needless to say number of employee transferred in secret and contract was 2billion worth at the time of estimation. According to 'Shadow Factory' 35 contractors shared this contract.

Basically employees sat on the same chair but got paycheck from different company.

http://www.crocodyl.org/spies_for_hire/project_groundbreaker_nsa_contract

Unit 8200 of Israel Army and Spy softwares

It is easy to notice that antivirus, telecom spying software goes back to Israel company. Unit 8200 developed software for Mossad. Due to revolving-door practices executives from Unit 8200 started  software companies based on their previous knowledge.In Israel military experience counts in job interview, especially if you are from Unit 8200.

Variant system, Narus, NICE, Comverse, Check point, ECtel are few examples.


Source: Shadow Factory by James Bamford

former NSA officers working for private contractors.

Revolving door is a pillar of corporations in US. This incestuous relation is strong in Defense. Here is few of NSA officers who quite NSA and headed to private firms. Once NSA guy joined the private firm, the profits of the company shoots. Following is may be a 1% of list. I do not think if it is possible to track this relation.

SPARTA - Maureen Baginski (NSA’s signals intelligence director) October 2006.
Applied Signal Technology -John P. Devine, (former NSA’s deputy director for technology)
TRW -William Studeman (former NSA director)
Cylink - McConnell’s (former NSA deputy director)
E Systems - Charles R. Lord(NSA deputy director)

William B. Black Jr, ex NSA guy was working for SAIC. He quit SAIC and joined NSA again in 2000. Later SAIC got $280 million Trailblazer contract, the project William B. Black Jr managed in NSA.

Source: Shadow Factory by James Bamford

Rocket fuel

Quote from the book Griftopia in the context of Greenspan denying the existence of bubble in market..

"humanity has reached a happy stage in history where bullshit can be used as rocket fuel"

ePub to PDF conversion using 'Adobe Acrobat Pro Extender"

Following the best method for converting ePub to PDF. I have used Calibre and font in the converted PDF is way to big, pages are too small. Following method gives normal font size. You need 'Adobe ACrobat Pro Extender"


1) Rename the extension from EPUB to RAR
2) Unzip
3) Open *.OPF file. Navigate to following TAG
           ""
4) Open 'Adobe ACrobat Pro Extender". Navigate to    
   File -> Combine -> Merge Files in PDF
5) In "Combine files" dialog
     a. select 'single PDF' button on R-Top corner
     b. click on 'Add files'
     c. Add the all HTML files in a single shot
     d. Then re arrange the files in the ORDER given in  "" of step-3
       Example:
             -> select XXXXX_cvi_YYY.html
              -> select XXXXX_tp_YYY.html
             -> select XXXXX_cop_YYY.html
6) Click Combine.

7) You have PDF

Science point of view?

Some say orange and orange-extract are same, at least in terms of nutrition(like both of them share citric acid etc..). People take pride while expressing this as if this is conquering of chemistry of Orange. In general this reductionist talk is seen as being scientifically aware.

Now there is an another group of people of who say Orange and orange-extract are not same because latter does not capture every aspect of Orange. Even this kind of talk is seen as sign of being scientifically aware.


How convincing these arguments are depends on listener.

Well I think orange-extract captures only one character of Orange. It is like defining Gandhi as Indian while ignoring all other characteristics.

Identify INLINE attachments in MAPI message

Inline attachments sit amidst the main body of e-mail. And the main body has syntax to refer to these attachments. This syntax is different for HTML and RTF. main bodies. HTML main body uses ContentID to refer to attachment. RTF main body uses /objattph to refer to attachment.





Exceptions
============
1) HTML mainbody some times uses RTF syntax to refer to inline attachment. Here is an example of that and note that there are no CID inside HTML stream. Correspondingly there is 'Content-ID' header for inline-attachment.

HTML mainbodypart
=================
 img src="objattph://"
 
Attachment bodypart
====================
 Content-Type: image/jpeg; name="Picture (Device Independent Bitmap) 1.jpg"
 Content-Description: Picture (Device Independent Bitmap) 1.jpg
 Content-Disposition: inline;
    filename="Picture (Device Independent Bitmap) 1.jpg";
    creation-date="Mon, 17 Jun 2013 18:21:33 GMT";
    modification-date="Mon, 17 Jun 2013 18:21:35 GMT"
 Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64

Mushroom rice

Potato + Mushroom + Corn + spice + Garlic + small quantity of water.

Keep this on stove for 30+minutes with low flame.

Churn once is a while.

Finally mix with rice, then  Eat.


Note: You may have to add salt because mushroom and corn are sweet

Humans taming energy

Simple burning fire(like forest fire) and steam engine are examples for non-structured and structured energies. Humans came to know about fire first but required 100s of years to channel that the energy to do sophisticated work in internal combustion engine, and the jet engine.

Extensive and Intensive physical properties

Extensive property depends on the 'extent' of the object. Value of Extensive property will be less for smaller object and more for larger object. Example: Weight is Extensive property. Weight of cup of water is smaller compared to weight of bucket full of water.

Intensive property is independent of the 'extent' of the object. Value of Intensive property will be same irrespective of the size of the object. Example: Density is Intensive property. Density is same for water that is inside cup or bucket.

IQWiG (Drug quality control in Germany)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_Quality_and_Efficiency_in_Health_Care

In Germany drug makers have to prove to IQWiG that their products are good compared to the ones already available, then only Govt. buys from that drug maker. Not many western countries are courageous and honest enough do this. In US Medicare and Medicaid are paid by Govt., and Govt. does not even negotiate for cheap price. Drug maker does not have to prove anything about superiority to sell to Govt.


US is a dream customer for Pharma

EMA and FDA

EMA is the agency responsible for regulating medicines in EU. EMA is counterpart of FDA. Till recently EMA was not forth coming in sharing drug-trail data with independent researches like Cochrane. The reason given by EMA were:

- 'these documents have commercial data'
- 'these documents have patient personal data'
- 'these documents have data about the design of clinical trail'
- 'documents  were shredded because it passed legal hold period'.
-'you can use the data for analysis but should not publish the results'

Going by these excuses EMA is representing drug makers, not the people or tax payers.

Independent researcher's struggle with EMA
http://www.cochrane.dk/research/EMA/

Now EMA has made all drug-trail data available for scrutiny.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/15/us-europe-medicines-idUSBRE86E04I20120715

Number needed to treat

Source: Your Medical mInd

It is not what it means when the doctor says "By taking a statin pill, you’ll reduce your risk of a heart attack over the next ten years by as much as 30 percent.”. It is not mean that out 100 your risk of h-a reduced by 30%. Doctor here uses 'health literacy' lingo and particularly "Number needed to treat".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_needed_to_treat

Female's ability to fight pathogens

Source: 'Why we get sick'

According to this book we (including doctors) misunderstand defense mechanism against infection as disease. Author gives example fever, diarrhea and menstruation. In fact diarrhea's case is easy to spot. Some people experience diarrhea after drinking rather acidic coffee. In this situation corrective role of diarrhea is obvious.

Book dwells lot in to menstruation. According to book, menstruation liquid is tuned for fighting pathogens and is low in nutrients(so as to not to waste good things). Morphologically, female reproductive tract (F tubes, ..cervix, vagina) is not made for upstream but for down stream traffic. Only thing that defies this traffic rule is sperm, a potential carrier of pathogens. According to the book, the rate of menstruation for a species (note, not for individual) is proportional to the rate of sexual activity. Seems menstruation in other mammals is far less compared to humans because former's frequency of sex is far less compared to that of humans.

Is Natural selection looking out for us?

Source: 'Why we get Sick' book

Natural selection does not take long term well being of species in to account. Looking out for species would require 'group selection'. Example for 'group selection' is a bird choosing not to eat and thus opting for  death so that species survives. Basically the gene, actor in Natural selection cares for its well being not that of beholder. This implies that natural selection does not always result in healthy species. Richard Dawkins implies the same in his book 'Selfish Gene'.


According to this book Natural selection does not over engineer or go for perfection. We can see this in our spine. Back problem is like cough, everyone has it. According 'The aging spine' book our spine starts degenerating as early as 2nd decade.

Uranium used in Hiroshima came from a stock pile kept in a vegetable oil factory located Bayonne bridge located in NY and NJ border. Source of this uranium was Congo and owner was Belgian business man waiting for potential customer for stock pile.

https://fopnews.wordpress.com/2010/09/14/staten-islands-tainted-edge-geologic-city-report-3/

specification of war

Recently I heard a talk about definition of war. We also hear the phrase 'rules of war'. This post puts those two togather.

It seems there are two definitions for war: 'Industrialized war' and 'Non-industrialized war'. Popular opinion is that Industrialized war is lawful. US Govt. often makes this point while justifying drone and Iraq war. I want to go back to colonial times of occupation of India by UK. During those times UK was able to defeat Kings in Indian states using their superior fire power. UK used gun powder and Indian kings were using swords. Going by modern definition of war, UK and India were using 'Industrialized war' and 'Non-industrialized war' strategy respectively. And UK could have justified colonial occupation as legal war, though it sounds absurd in hind sight.

So the definition of war is not clear as black and white, especially given that US has not taken part in World court.

Golden Hard and Light molding paste.

I have used both hard and light molding paste.
Hard molding paste creates harsh texture. The edges are too pronounced and create shiny rounds when photographed.

Light molding paste creates much smooth texture. You could dilute Light molding paste to make the texture smoother.

Unable to turn off caching on USB drive (Win2008 R2)

Another nasty bug from Win2008 R2. At last MS gave mind of its own to OS. Great job

Hitachi Travelstar-5K500.B rated for low power

Seagate


Hitachi


General opinion is 5200rpm disks consume less power compared to 7200rpm; someone even suggested that Data centers run 5400rpm just because it takes less power.

Hitachi Travelstar-5K500.B

Seagate spec

I chose Hitachi Travelstar-5K500.B hard drive for laptop, just to keep the load on battery low.