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Yes, it is cloudy and raining this week, and the media has been reporting a glut of stories about cloud computing already.  But the IBM Center has released a new report “Moving to the Cloud:  An Introduction to Cloud Computing in Government” that is targeted to executives, not technologists. 

The buzz in the technology world around cloud computing is almost deafening, but for good reason.  The report lays out the many reasons for its use, including economies of scale, better collaboration, and usage-based pricing (you pay only for what you use, like electricity).  For example, a school district in Tennessee established a private cloud and was able to cut its IT support costs by 60 percent.  These kind of savings catch people’s eyes.

The author, Dr. David Wyld of Southeastern Louisiana University, notes that “Cloud computing is an emerging concept.  It has many names, including:  grid computing, utility computing, and on-demand computing.  Indeed, one of the hindrances . . . is the lack of understanding of what it is—and isn’t. . . “  He relies on the definition developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which lays out the essential characteristics of cloud computing:  on-demand self-service, ubiquitous network access, locaction-independent resource pooling, rapid elasticity, and measured service.

While still a geeky definition, more importantly, Wyld points to the fact that we’ve all used cloud computing already – Gmail, YouTube, GoogleDocs, Flickr, and Ning are all common examples in the commercial world.  And Wyld says over 4,000 universities have converted their email systems to cloud computing as well.

But government has been a bit more cautious in its adoption.  Wyld gives examples of the use of cloud in government, lays out ten challenges to public managers in the use of cloud computing (like security and interoperability), and offers some predictions on the road ahead.  He also offers links to some useful video primers, like the one from the UK’s Computing Magazine as well as the one from GSA’s Apps.gov.

A key takeaway for government managers:  cloud computing has potential to transform government IT but it won’t be a silver bullet.  It will most likely be more useful for mission support services such as e-mail, web servers, data storage, and for common cross-government services such as accounting, procurement, and collaboration tools.  But agencies will likely be more cautious in using it for core mission business applications such as the Social Security payroll reporting system or the air traffic control routing system.

When fantasy overrules reality, you meet Szamboti.

Zu Teil: -1- | -2- | -3- | -4- | -5- | -6- | -7- | -8- |

Passenderweise behandelt dieser Teil vorwiegend die Mythen um WTC7.

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62.

Es ist Zufall, dass CNN und die BBC in ihren Nachrichten eine Stunde vor dem Ereignis bereits berichteten, dass WTC7 Gebäude sei zusammengestürzt, obwohl es zu diesem Zeitpunkt noch stand und sie somit Hellseher waren.

Bevor wir uns das genannte Video anschauen muss man sich klar machen das allen anwesenden bewusst war; WTC7 wird einstürzen! Es benötigte keinerlei hellseherische Fähigkeiten um zu erkennen, dass durch die starke Zerstörung der Südseite und die dadurch resultierenden Feuer das Gebäude auf kurz oder lang einstürzen werde.
Aus diesem Grund hat die Feuerwehr auch gar nicht erst versucht das Feuer in diesem Gebäude zu löschen. Es wäre viel zu gefährlich gewesen es überhaupt zu betreten.

Man könnte sogar behaupten die halbe Stadt wusste was passieren wird. Siehe z.B. diese Amateuraufnahme.

Ein geheimes Vorwissen der Medien können wir also definitiv ausschließen. Dies kommt in dem kritisiertem Video auch keinesfalls so rüber. Schaut es euch selbst an, ich denke ich muss es nicht weiter kommentieren.

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63.

Es ist Zufall, dass WTC7 als dritter Wolkenkratzer an diesem Tag, perfekt, symmetrisch und in Fallgeschwindigkeit zusammengebrochen ist, obwohl gar kein Flugzeug hineingeflogen ist und deshalb auch kein Flugbenzin ein Feuer machen konnte, als Ursache für den Zusammensturz.

Wer Punkt 62 gelesen hat, dem sollte klar sein das quasi alle anwesenden wussten das WTC7 einstürzen wird. Aber warum?

Als der erste Turm einstürzte, schlugen große Trümmerteile in das WTC7. Auf diesem Video kann man es z.T. sehen. Die Trümmerteile zerstörten große Teile der Südfassade und beschädigten die Trägerkonstruktion des Gebäudes. Durch Kurzschlüsse brach auf mindestens 10 Etagen Feuer aus die sich rasch ausbreiteten und die Konstruktion zusätzlich schwächten. Nachdem das Gebäude 7 Stunden lang den Flammen ausgesetzt war, passierte das unvermeidliche. [Quelle: NIST]

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64.

Es ist Zufall, dass nie vor dem 11. September und nie nachher, jemals ein Hochhaus durch Feuer eingestürzt ist, obwohl es Wolkenkratzer gab, die bis zu 20 Stunden lichterloh brannten.

Bis auf den Anschlägen vom 11. September ist es auch noch nie vorgekommen das eine voll getankte Boeing 767 in ein Hochhaus mit leichtbau Rohr-Rahmen-System stürzte. Ganz abgesehen davon ist die Behauptung ein Feuer könne kein Hochhaus zum einstürzen bringen falsch.

Beispiel: Hier ist das Gebäude zwar nicht eingestürzt, durch das Feuer wurde die Struktur jedoch stark geschwächt und das Gebäude musste wegen Einsturzgefahr abgerissen werden.

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65.

Es ist Zufall, dass ausgerechnet die Büros des US-Verteidigungsminsteriums, des US-Geheimdienstes CIA, des US-Secret Service, des US-Finanzamtes, der US-Wertpapieraufsichtsbehörde SEC und der Notfallkommandostand von Bürgermeister Giuliani, der extra zur Bewältigung von Terrorangriffe eingerichtet wurde, alle im WTC7 waren und sieben Stunden nach den Anschlägen durch den plötzlichen Kollaps des Gebäudes zerstört wurden.

Da nimmt der Begriff Inside-Job eine ganz neue Bedeutung an.

Es ist doch absurd “die Bombe” ist eigene heim zu legen oder nicht?

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66.

Es ist Zufall, dass der Secret Service die in ihren Büros im WTC7 Gebäude eingelagerten Stinger Boden-Luft-Raketen nicht zur Verteidigung einsetzen, obwohl diese für Besuche des Präsidenten in New York extra für den Schutz des Luftraumes vorgesehen sind.

Das ist mir echt zu dumm. Sorry…

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67.

Es ist Zufall, dass alle Dokumente, Unterlagen und Beweise welche die SEC in ihren Büros über den ENRON-Skandal und andere Finanzverbrechen der Wall Street im WTC7 lagerte, um diese Fälle untersuchen zu können, alle durch den Zusammenbruch vernichtet wurden.

4 Flugzeuge entführen um sie in 4 verschiedene Gebäude im Land zu fliegen. Dabei tausende Menschen umbringen und eine riesige Zerstörung hinterlassen…

Mir würden einfacherer Wege einfallen um ein paar Unterlagen und Datenträger zu zerstören.

Es stimmt natürlich nicht das dort alle Beweise zerstört wurden. Die Untersuchung um den Enron-Skandal wurden im Oktober 2001 aufgenommen und erst vor kurzem wurde der ehemalige Enron-Manager verurteilt.

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68.

Es ist Zufall, dass Bürgermeister Giuliani nicht zum extra dafür geschaffenen Notfallkommandostand im WTC7 Gebäude sich begab, sondern gleich ein provisorisches Hauptquartier in einer Polizeistation einrichtete. Wusste er schon vorher, WTC7 wird zusammenbrechen?

Es macht viel Sinn seinen Kommandostand direkt neben zwei Hochhäuser zu platzieren, die gerade eben von Flugzeugen getroffen wurden und in Flammen stehen.

Ich spar mir weitere Kommentare…

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69.

Es ist Zufall, dass alle Stahlträger sehr zügig vom Ort des grössten Verbrechens entfernt und nach China als Schrott verschifft wurden, und somit alle Beweise um die Ursache der Zusammenstürze der WTC Gebäude untersuchen zu können vernichtet wurden.

Auszug aus Wikipedia:

“Bis Mai 2002 waren insgesamt etwa 40.000 Personen bei den Rettungs- und Aufräumarbeiten an Ground Zero beteiligt.”

Zügig ist so eine Sache. Aber man hätte den Schrott natürlich auch noch ein paar Jahre dort liegen lassen können… man weiß ja nie was man dort noch so tolles finden kann.

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70.

Es ist Zufall, dass ein Teil der angeblichen Entführer ihren Wohnsitz auf amerikanischen Militärbasen hatten, Führerscheine mit dieser Adresse besassen und dort ausgebildet wurden.

Die Personalien von einigen Terroristen passten zu Saudi-arabischen Absolventen die früher auf US-Militärbasen ausgebildet wurden. Das auf amerikanischen Militärstützpunkten Saudi-arabische Soldaten (auch Piloten) ausgebildet werden ist nichts besonderes, sondern ein Teil der Zusammenarbeit zwischen den beiden Ländern. Es wird allerdings bezweifelt das es genau diese Personen waren, da zufällig genau die Daten dieser Personen seinerzeit auf Webseiten des Militärs abrufbar waren.

Es hätten aber auch gestohlene Ausweise sein können, die von gefallenen oder entführten Soldaten stammen. Solche Ausweise sollen in entsprechenden Kreisen sehr begehrt sein.

Da sich dies alles nicht (mehr) beweisen lässt, bleibt es reine Spekulation.

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71.

Es ist Zufall, dass wenige Tage nach dem 11. September, Mitglieder der Bin Laden Familie, die sich in den USA damals aufhielt, zusammen mit anderen Mitgliedern der saudischen Königsfamilie, auf besonderer Erlaubnis des Präsidenten, mit Privatmaschinen ausreisen durften, obwohl niemand sonst fliegen durfte.

Das ist wahr jedoch kein Zufall. Was meint ihr wie “beliebt” diese Personen nach den Anschlägen waren. Nahezu jeder Amerikaner hätte diese Leute wahrscheinlich Lynchen wollen; alleine weil sie den Namen Bin Laden bzw. Bin Ladin trugen.

Sie waren Gäste des Präsidenten und fürchteten in diesem Land um ihr Leben. Deshalb gab es diese Ausnahme.

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by Glen Clancy

Bang. It all began with a huge fireball spraying over the streets of Manhattan, New York. A plane had crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Bang. A second plane hit the South Tower and it was disturbingly clear that this was no accident.

There were horrendous scenes of people falling from the towers — so regular that they were given a collective name by the first responders: “jumpers”. Many Australians — those still awake — watched the tragedy unfold on their television screens. “We were sitting there having our dinner break at midnight and we saw the second plane hit,” John Bursill, an Australian aircraft maintenance engineer, remembers watching the events live at work. “Then we watched the buildings collapse.”

WTC Collapse

Suddenly, just fifty-six minutes after being struck the South Tower collapsed violently to the ground, almost in slow motion as if from a Hollywood blockbuster. Concrete slabs were hurled hundreds of metres smashing into the streets below.

Panic waves were sent across the US as two more planes reportedly crashed into the Pentagon and an empty field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. 2,993 people died including ten Australians. This day became known simply as 9/11.

Fifteen months later, the Bush administration – under pressure from the 9/11 victims’ families — belatedly initiated an investigation into the events of 9/11 and established the 9/11 Commission.

The Commission concluded in August 2004 that nineteen Islamic extremists — fifteen Saudis —  ‘driven by Osama Bin Laden’ hijacked four planes and ‘turned them into deadly guided missiles’. However, there was significant doubt over the effectiveness of the 9/11 Commission investigation.

A 2004 Zogby International poll revealed more than sixty per cent of New York City residents believed that the 9/11 Commission had not answered all the important questions about what actually happened on 9/11. After the results of this poll were published outspoken victims’ family members released this statement: “We have assembled one hundred notable Americans and forty family members of those who died to sign this 9/11 Statement, which calls for immediate public attention to unanswered questions that suggest that people within the current administration may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war.”

The widespread skepticism of the official narration of 9/11 gave rise to a controversial phenomenon — the 9/11 Truth movement. The 9/11 Truth movement is the collective name of loosely affiliated organizations and individuals supporting the 9/11 victims’ families’ calls for a new impartial investigation. The predominant belief within the movement is that the Twin Towers and Building Seven were brought down using high-tech explosives. Building Seven or World Trade Center Seven (WTC7) was a 47-floor skyscraper located one hundred metres from the North Tower — collapsing at 5:20pm on 9/11.

“Show me the evidence that supports the official story of 9/11,” says John Bursill, now a leading member of the 9/11 Truth movement in Australia. “Show me the evidence that supports the idea that al-Qaeda is an international network of terrorists controlled by Osama Bin Laden.”

Bursill became skeptical about the 9/11 Commission’s final report after watching Loose Change (2^nd Edition), a documentary questioning the official version of 9/11. “It took me a long time to convince myself about the building collapses — that it wasn’t just a collapse,” says Bursill. “The evidence clearly proves all three buildings – Building One, Two and Seven — were brought down in a manner of controlled demolition.”

After months of research Bursill became an active member of the 9/11 Truth movement. “I started distributing DVDs to my work colleagues. I had this compulsion to do something.”

Bursill facilitated the 2008 Truth Now Tour in Sydney that brought outspoken critic of the official narrative of 9/11 Japanese MP Yukihisa Fujita to discuss the events of 9/11.

Bursill is now organising a follow-up conference, The Hard Evidence Tour, which will be presented next month in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Wellington. Former Brigham Young University professor of physics Dr. Steven Jones Dr. Steven Jones and architect Richard Gage, founder of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth (AE911Truth), will be arriving from the US to present their research at the conference.

Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth (AE911Truth)

Richard Gage, practicing architect of 20 years and member of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) was interviewed on KMPH Fox TV 26 in May this year.

“We have the evidence of the ten key features of controlled demolition,” Gage said. “Fires in high-rises have never brought down a steel framed high-rise building, at all, ever.”

“Almost every architect and engineer we show this information to agrees with us that these are controlled demolitions — if we can get them to look at the information,” says Gage, “because obviously the implications of a controlled demolition are dark.”

The federal technology agency, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), assigned to investigate the collapse of the Twin Towers concluded in 2005 that fires caused by the impact of the aircraft led to the steel weakening and subsequent collapses. NIST reported that it found no corroborating evidence that the Twin Towers were brought down with explosives.

“In the case of Building Seven (WTC7),” says Gage, “it collapses straight down into its own footprint at freefall speed in the first 100 feet. It’s dropping symmetrically, smoothly at freefall speed in the first hundred feet — freefall acceleration through 40,000 tons of structural steel.”

Gage asserts that a freefall collapse can only occur if all the supporting columns fail simultaneously — which can only be achieved by well placed explosives.

The NIST final report on WTC7, released in November 2008, said that the fires caused an ‘extraordinary event’. The heating of floor beams caused a critical support column to fail, initiating a progressive collapse. “The reason for the collapse of WTC7 is no longer a mystery,” Shyam Sunder, NIST’s lead investigator said, “WTC7 collapsed because of fires fuelled by office furnishings. It did not collapse from explosives or from fuel oil fires.”

Sunder dismisses the research of AE911Truth saying, “They are not really credible. What they look at are perceived anomalies on what happened on 9/11 and trying to extrapolate from anomalies into grand theories and really that’s not science. Solid science has to be based on a community of experts that understand, have researched, [and] have a record of scholarly publications in the field.”

Last year Gage requested to meet with Sunder. “I’m not sure that is necessarily a productive use of time,” Sunder declined, “because the science has to be read, has to be understood and has to be digested. When you don’t have a two way discussion based on peer reviewed publications, when you don’t have discussion based on solid scientific theories it really doesn’t make any sense.”

“This is quite disappointing,” says Gage, “as we now have over 700 architects and engineers for 9/11 Truth calling for a real investigation into the destruction of the three world trade center high-rises on 9/11. At what point will they [NIST] take us seriously? Perhaps when our rapidly growing numbers reach 1000?”

Gage is also concerned by the molten steel found at the base of the Twin Towers and WTC7 witnessed by the first responders and documented by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Gage asserts that the molten steel was produced from nano-thermite — a type of reactive material prepared under military contracts used for propellants, explosives and pyrotechnics.

“The by-product of thermite is molten steel and it is dispersed throughout all of this dust,” says Gage. “And there is small chips of unexploded thermite as well. This is very high-tech thermite — nano-thermite. It’s not found in a cave in Afghanistan. It’s produced in very sophisticated defense department contracting laboratories.”

Nano-thermite discovered in WTC dust samples

This year the discovery of nano-thermite in four independently collected dust samples was published in the Bentham Open Chemical Physics Journal. The peer-reviewed paper, Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe was co-authored by Dr. Steven Jones and eight other scientists, including Australian chemist Dr. Frank Legge and Danish chemist Dr. Neils Harrit. Later this month Dr. Neils Harrit will discuss their discovery in the first nationally televised debate on the official narrative of 9/11 on French TV France 2.

“In this paper we present results from four independently collected samples of WTC dust,” Dr. Steven Jones explains. “We found this unexploded thermitic material — high-tech form of thermite — using electron microscopy, x-ray, energy dispersive spectroscopy and differential scanning calorimetry … What in the world is unexploded thermitic material doing in the dust?”

NIST responded to the question of the molten steel in a 2006 Frequently Asked Questions Fact Sheet saying, “Any molten steel in the wreckage was more likely due to the high temperature resulting from long exposure to combustion within the pile than to short exposure to fires or explosions while the buildings were standing.” However, NIST acknowledged that it “did not test for the residue of [explosives or thermite] in the steel”.

It has been eight years since the tragedy of the 9/11 attacks and the 9/11 Truth movement doesn’t appear to be going away. There are now over 950 architects and engineers for 9/11 Truth calling for a new investigation. “The scientific peer-reviewed and refereed study by Dr. Steven Jones”, 9/11 victims’ family member Manny Bidello told France 24 National TV News earlier this month, “has proven that there are highly engineered military explosives found in the debris of the World Trade Center.”

One can’t refute the passion and tenacity of the 9/11 Truth movement but can NIST refute their “hard evidence”?

As the discussion of newish web stuff changes, so do the terms used. For example, for a while, delicious didn’t just mean tasty; but now the web service formerly known as del.icio.us has gone off enough radars that the word means tasty again. Even the term for the newish web stuff changes: it used to be Web 2.0, and now it’s social media – unless there is some newer term that those more current than I are already using.

Back in the Web 2.0 days, cloud meant a tag cloud or word cloud. These days, cloud usually refers to cloud computing.

But what does cloud computing mean? According to the USA’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST):

Cloud computing is a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction. This cloud model promotes availability and is composed of…

I downloaded the whole definition (which I got to via ReadWriteWeb). I found it to be two single-spaced pages – of Word, which at first seemed a strange format for a standards body to be using, but there is such a thing as a de facto standard.

Using the wonderful Wordle, I generated a word cloud depicting cloud computing. Here it is.