While the coating compenents were potentially reactive, they were separated by a layer of material that should have inhibited the reaction from starting.
Alas, the Wikipedia article forgot one aspect: the mounting bolts for the canvas covering were made of steel, which allowed a static discharge to move through the canvas covering VERY quickly. Because the Hindenberg had flown near a thunderstorm just before the explosion, there was a buildup of static electricity on the entire airship and when it discharged the mounting bolts transmitted the static discharge, causing a large portion of the canvas covering to literally explode on the initial explosion.
That's why on the short-lived airship Graf Zeppelin II (LZ 130), the Zeppelin engineers switched to bronze mounting bolts for the canvas covering, so the static discharge would not be transmitted through the mounting bolts.
By the way, the Zeppelin company actually produced an internal report about the Hindenberg explosion and that report cited issues with the potential flammability of the canvas covering doping compound. Alas, that report was quickly surpressed by the Nazi government for various reasons.
To be more specific, the Hindenberg burned extremely rapidly because the doping compound on the outer canvas covering of the airship was a combination of nitrocellulose and aluminum powder--the EXACT ingredients of solid rocket motors! That's why you had that spectacular initial explosion as a large portion of the canvas covering literally exploded from the static discharge (people forget that just before the explosion the Hindenberg had flown through a thunderstorm).
Today, a rigid airship designed with modern technology would be vastly safer, thanks to the use of helium as a lifting gas and vastly better understanding of using fire-retardant materials. Indeed, the Zeppelin NT airship points to a future of larger airships that can carry a couple of hundred passengers on flights where the airship is cruising at 60-70 knots.
Re:Time to throw out our current tax system?
on
The Jobs Crunch
·
· Score: 1
.... start executing the corporate boards of the drug companies that are causing us to spend twice as much to get the same health care as Canada.
That would be great except that here in the USA, our litigation system has driving up the cost of medical care because pharmaceutical companies and medical providers MUST factor in the cost of liability lawsuits and exorbitantly high malpractice insurance. If we just use the British system of litigation--where the loser pays all legal costs--that will quickly weed out the frivilous lawsuits and keep the lawsuits that have real merit, which means drug companies and medical providers won't have to put aside so much money to protect themselves in case of these lawsuits.
Time to throw out our current tax system?
on
The Jobs Crunch
·
· Score: 1
I think many of the problems that are plaguing our economy is caused by our progressive income tax system with its very complicated deductions. It's too easy to cause unintended changes in our economy due to this issue.
We should start all over again with a true flat tax system (no tax with income up to poverty line, 3.5% up to median income, and 6% above that) that has effectively no deductions. Not only would Americans save some US$250 billion per year in compliance costs alone, but a true flat tax system would ensure we don't get strange effects on the US economy like way too much emphasis on building expensive housing. Also, with such an extremely low tax rate, you'll see huge amounts of money being invested in the USA because we would approach tax haven status.
I think the Itanium-based servers will continue to be sold because the strength of the Itanium CPU is specifically for large-volume server-based operations.
AMD's Opteron/Athlon64 has succeeded because 1) they are VASTLY cheaper than Itanium CPU's and 2) incorporating the memory controller into the CPU die means that the Opteron/Athlon64 CPU's have nearly as much computing power as the Itanium CPU but does offer the advantages of keeping compatibility with most x86-based apps out there with a very straightforward growth to 64-bit apps down the road.
This means no pop-up blocker/firewall/{insert service pack 2 goodie here} for Win2k or below.
That depends on if Microsoft will release a new version of Internet Explorer. Given that Microsoft has admitted through the MSDN forums (it was mentioned on/. about a month ago) that they might want to release a new version of IE, you might see a new version of IE by the middle of 2005 that will incorporate a popup/popunder blocker and possibily a blocker for Macromedia Flash animation, too.
They aren't saying they won't provide security patches for holes, they're stating they won't provide the features that are in SP2 in anything other than XP.
That is correct. The Windows XP SP2 Security Control Panel is a feature that will stay ONLY with Windows XP, but Microsoft will continue to provide security patch upgrades to Windows Me and Windows 2000 users. In short, expect Microsoft to offer security patches for Windows Me and Windows 2000 users at minimum through the end of 2005.
On a related note, I do think that we will see a new standalone version of Internet Explorer probably by the middle of 2005, but because it is a true WIN32 application it will only work with Windows 2000 Professional and Windows XP Home/Professional on the client side.
Teletext never really popular in the USA....
on
Ceefax Turns 30
·
· Score: 1, Interesting
....Mostly because here in the USA we have flat-rate unlimited local calling for telephone service, which resulted in people going online through modems using telephone lines. That's why online services proliferated, and the rise of the public Internet happened in the USA due to this factor and the arrival of V.34 (28.8 to 33.6Kbps download speeds) and V.90 (56 Kbps download speed) modems in the 1990's.
I think for the short term future, we will likely see the wide acceptance of what some call a multi-purpose vehicle, essentially a "taller" station wagon with very flexible interior arrangements.
The concept, which originated with the original Renault Megané Scenic in the middle 1990's, is very popular in most of the world, especially those who want vehicles with station wagon and minivan-like features but without the poor fuel efficiency of older American-style station wagons and today's minivans. Here in the USA, that trend is starting to take hold: the success of the Ford Focus ZX5 hatchback and station wagon models, the success of the Mazda3, the hot sales of the Toyota Matrix/Pontiac Vibe twins, the hot sales of the Scion xA/xB "tall wagons," the hatchback design of the current Toyota Prius and the success of the Suzuki Aerio SX hatchback shows Americans do want this class of vehicle.
In the near future, Honda will introduce to the US market the small but very roomy Fit hatchback as a 2006 model, and Honda will likely sell vehicles based on the design of the recently-introduced FR-V/Edix tall wagon for the US market, too.
These class of vehicles will likely down the road benefit from new engine technologies, whether hybrid drivetrains, clean turbodiesel engines, or eventually fuel cell power.
Given the fact that Mozilla-branded browsers default to Google search and the fact that many Internet Explorer 5.x/6.x users install the Google taskbar add-on, Google should not waste their money to developing their own web browser, even it they use the Gecko rendering engine developed by the Mozilla team.
Google should spend its resources to develop improve their search engine and their online advertising system instead.
Big Media hates people like Matt Drudge and the "bloggers in their pajamas". Granted, they don't have the investigative resources that the big news organizations have, but they have the power to raise questions about the direction of the news.
I have to disagree on that assessment. On the blog run by conservative radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt, he calls bloggers Open Source reporting, where information is shared openly and reviewed by other people on a very large scale to ensure accuracy, just like Linux with its publicly-reviewable source code of the operating system and its components.
However, there are still enough people around who have used older Netscape versions (3.x and 4.x versions) that the current Mozilla 1.7x default interface are still comfortable for them.
Plus, the Lord of the Rings trilogy were some of the most successful movies ever to heavily use CG, but just as much energy seems to have been put into finding good locations, creating elaborate and convincing physical sets, and finding the right flesh-and-blood actors.
The reason why The Lord of the Rings movies are so well-liked was the fact they used as many natural locations as possible to provide a background to "layer" in the CGI effects. A good example is the from The Fellowship of the Ring when they were travelling down the Anduin River; much of the background is CGI, but that was in addition to scenes filmed at various locations in New Zealand itself.
Actually, given the increasing number of broadband users in the USA, the difference in download times for FireFox and Mozilla 1.7.3 is no longer significant.
But Mozilla has a few things that FireFox lacks right now: 1) better page-rendering accuracy and 2) a very good mail and newsgroup reader.
Mind you, I would actually prefer switch to Mozilla 1.7.3 suite instead of FireFox, mostly because 1) it does a very good job rendering even complex web pages, 2) it has an excellent mail and newsgroup reader, and 3) most of today's Windows-based machines have way more than enough hard disk space to accommodate Mozilla 1.7.3.
I am kind of puzzled by why Mozilla FireFox is hip.
As a user of Mozilla regularly since Version 1.6 (I'm running 1.7.3 right now), Mozilla has pretty much most of the more useful features in FireFox, especially the tabbed browsing windows and popup blocker. And I do like Mozilla 1.7.3's excellent mail and news reader, too.
These more effective exhaust treament systems are killed by the high levels of sulfur in todays US diesel fuel.
The biggest problem is that the high level of sulfur compounds will destroy the new generation of catalytic converters that double as particulate traps too easily due to the sulfur compounds acting akin to sulfuric acid. It should be noted that these new catalytic converters will work safely if the sulfur level is under 200 parts per million, and the initial EPA standard that will be phased in starting next year will be around 20 parts per million. These new catalytic converters/particulate traps should allow a diesel-powered vehicle to meet the Ultra-Low Emissions Vehicle (ULEV) standard easily.
The nice thing about these clean-burning diesels is that we can eventually make all our large vehicles (minivans, light trucks and SUV's) all switch to diesel power starting in 2006. That right there will improve fuel efficiency as much as 45%; imagine a Honda Odyssey minivan with a turbodiesel engine rated at 240 bhp but with far more low-end torque than the current 255 bhp gasoline engine found on the 2005 Odyssey. It could also mean mean EPA milage ratings of 28 mpg city, 39 mpg highway!:-)
While it might be understandable that we may have slowdowns of installing Windows XP Service Pack 2 on a current install of Windows XP, what about this scenario: a from-scratch install of Windows XP Home/Professional from a CD-ROM that already has Service Pack 2 code on the installation CD-ROM disc?
I can probably say that a from-scratch install of Windows XP Home/Professional SP2 will probably have very little or none of the performance issues mentioned in the article.
I think the most important advantage of using nuclear propulsion is the fact you can have essentially a rocket engine running at low power for many days at a time. That could have one major upside: instead of a nine month trip one way between Earth and Mars the transit time could be reduced to something like six weeks!
At only six weeks' transit time, that drastically reduces the life support needs of the astronauts in terms of consumables like breathable air and water in the spaceship, which means less expense for building the habitable part of the spaceship.
I think the final multinational manned mission to Mars will be something like Zubrin's Mars Direct plan, but the spacecraft will be assembled in Earth orbit and use nuclear engines powered by very safe pebble-bed nuclear reactors.
Actually, the area off the coast of southern Massachusetts could be great for windpower. If we can just convince the homeowners on Nantucket Island and Martha's Vineyard to allow the construction of high-power wind turbines just off the coast of these islands both of these islands could essentially have most of their electric power needs met by these wind turbines.
The reason why the Soviets managed to get the first satellite into space is simple: a brilliant Russian rocket designer named Sergei P. Korolev, who passed away in 1966.
People forget that the Soviet rocket program in a very secret group called RNII was very underestimated by everyone else, because in the 1930's before the Yezhovchina Great Purge the Russians probably had some of the most advanced rocket development programs in the world--in some cases more advanced than the German programs at the time! Despite the Great Purge, Korolev managed to keep the majority of his development team at RNII together, and Korolev was actually working for SMERSH (Soviet counterintelligence) in the latter half of the 1940's studying German developments in rocket technology. That's why by the early 1950's the Soviet rocket program was probably more advanced than the US program, and that's why they were able to build the R-7 rocket designed by Korolev's team (which was far larger than any US equivalent rocket at the time) that carried the large-sized Soviet nuclear bombs with the side benefit of being able to launch payloads into orbit. The sheer size of the R-7 was also the reason why the Russians were able to launch unmanned probes around the Moon and launch the first manned flights. Because the R-7 was designed as an ICBM, it meant the ability to launch in a fairly short countdown sequence and used launch pads that could erect the rocket into firing position fairly quickly, too; that's why the Russians were able to launch reconnaissance satellites so quickly and had a pretty advanced space weapons program.
1. The DSPS satellites used to track infrared signatures from rocket launches would have detected the very strong and distinct IR emission from a nuclear explosion.
2. Radiation detectors downwind would be triggered from the point of explosion due to fallout particles.
Given that we didn't get that distince IR signature and there are no unusual radiation levels detected in South Korea, Japan, and Russia in the area around Vladivostok, it's very likely the explosion was caused by a muntions dump explosion or a munitions train exploding.
Mind you, I doubt AMPAS--which tends to surprisingly politically conservative--would want to nominate Fahrenheit 9/11 for Best Picture.
The reason is simple: AMPAS does not want to run the risk of a potentially massive consumer boycott. If there is ANYTHING Hollywood really worships it's the bottom line, and they don't want to see the movie industry suffer an organized economic boycott.
Remember the fiasco with The Reagans miniseries from last fall? The very fear that consumers were going to boycott the Super Bowl over the showing of this miniseries made then-CBS President Les Moonves kibosh its showing on CBS and the miniseries was shown on Showtime premium pay-cable channel instead.
And AMPAS actually was quite a bit annoyed by Michael Moore's acceptance speech aftering winning for Bowling with Columbine.
For one good reason: the majority of new external peripherals are now connected by USB 1.1/2.0 ports.
I mean look at the majority of multifunction (printer/scanner/fax) printers now being sold--they use USB ports almost exclusively to connect back to the computer. And scanners are now mostly connected to computers using USB ports, too.
IEEE-1394 ports will have their place, mostly for connecting devices that need large amounts of data being transferred to the computer (digital camcorders, professional grade scanners, etc.).
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While the coating compenents were potentially reactive, they were separated by a layer of material that should have inhibited the reaction from starting.
Alas, the Wikipedia article forgot one aspect: the mounting bolts for the canvas covering were made of steel, which allowed a static discharge to move through the canvas covering VERY quickly. Because the Hindenberg had flown near a thunderstorm just before the explosion, there was a buildup of static electricity on the entire airship and when it discharged the mounting bolts transmitted the static discharge, causing a large portion of the canvas covering to literally explode on the initial explosion.
That's why on the short-lived airship Graf Zeppelin II (LZ 130), the Zeppelin engineers switched to bronze mounting bolts for the canvas covering, so the static discharge would not be transmitted through the mounting bolts.
By the way, the Zeppelin company actually produced an internal report about the Hindenberg explosion and that report cited issues with the potential flammability of the canvas covering doping compound. Alas, that report was quickly surpressed by the Nazi government for various reasons.
To be more specific, the Hindenberg burned extremely rapidly because the doping compound on the outer canvas covering of the airship was a combination of nitrocellulose and aluminum powder--the EXACT ingredients of solid rocket motors! That's why you had that spectacular initial explosion as a large portion of the canvas covering literally exploded from the static discharge (people forget that just before the explosion the Hindenberg had flown through a thunderstorm).
Today, a rigid airship designed with modern technology would be vastly safer, thanks to the use of helium as a lifting gas and vastly better understanding of using fire-retardant materials. Indeed, the Zeppelin NT airship points to a future of larger airships that can carry a couple of hundred passengers on flights where the airship is cruising at 60-70 knots.
.... start executing the corporate boards of the drug companies that are causing us to spend twice as much to get the same health care as Canada.
That would be great except that here in the USA, our litigation system has driving up the cost of medical care because pharmaceutical companies and medical providers MUST factor in the cost of liability lawsuits and exorbitantly high malpractice insurance. If we just use the British system of litigation--where the loser pays all legal costs--that will quickly weed out the frivilous lawsuits and keep the lawsuits that have real merit, which means drug companies and medical providers won't have to put aside so much money to protect themselves in case of these lawsuits.
I think many of the problems that are plaguing our economy is caused by our progressive income tax system with its very complicated deductions. It's too easy to cause unintended changes in our economy due to this issue.
We should start all over again with a true flat tax system (no tax with income up to poverty line, 3.5% up to median income, and 6% above that) that has effectively no deductions. Not only would Americans save some US$250 billion per year in compliance costs alone, but a true flat tax system would ensure we don't get strange effects on the US economy like way too much emphasis on building expensive housing. Also, with such an extremely low tax rate, you'll see huge amounts of money being invested in the USA because we would approach tax haven status.
What about the server Itanium line?
I think the Itanium-based servers will continue to be sold because the strength of the Itanium CPU is specifically for large-volume server-based operations.
AMD's Opteron/Athlon64 has succeeded because 1) they are VASTLY cheaper than Itanium CPU's and 2) incorporating the memory controller into the CPU die means that the Opteron/Athlon64 CPU's have nearly as much computing power as the Itanium CPU but does offer the advantages of keeping compatibility with most x86-based apps out there with a very straightforward growth to 64-bit apps down the road.
This means no pop-up blocker/firewall/{insert service pack 2 goodie here} for Win2k or below.
/. about a month ago) that they might want to release a new version of IE, you might see a new version of IE by the middle of 2005 that will incorporate a popup/popunder blocker and possibily a blocker for Macromedia Flash animation, too.
That depends on if Microsoft will release a new version of Internet Explorer. Given that Microsoft has admitted through the MSDN forums (it was mentioned on
They aren't saying they won't provide security patches for holes, they're stating they won't provide the features that are in SP2 in anything other than XP.
That is correct. The Windows XP SP2 Security Control Panel is a feature that will stay ONLY with Windows XP, but Microsoft will continue to provide security patch upgrades to Windows Me and Windows 2000 users. In short, expect Microsoft to offer security patches for Windows Me and Windows 2000 users at minimum through the end of 2005.
On a related note, I do think that we will see a new standalone version of Internet Explorer probably by the middle of 2005, but because it is a true WIN32 application it will only work with Windows 2000 Professional and Windows XP Home/Professional on the client side.
....Mostly because here in the USA we have flat-rate unlimited local calling for telephone service, which resulted in people going online through modems using telephone lines. That's why online services proliferated, and the rise of the public Internet happened in the USA due to this factor and the arrival of V.34 (28.8 to 33.6Kbps download speeds) and V.90 (56 Kbps download speed) modems in the 1990's.
I think for the short term future, we will likely see the wide acceptance of what some call a multi-purpose vehicle, essentially a "taller" station wagon with very flexible interior arrangements.
The concept, which originated with the original Renault Megané Scenic in the middle 1990's, is very popular in most of the world, especially those who want vehicles with station wagon and minivan-like features but without the poor fuel efficiency of older American-style station wagons and today's minivans. Here in the USA, that trend is starting to take hold: the success of the Ford Focus ZX5 hatchback and station wagon models, the success of the Mazda3, the hot sales of the Toyota Matrix/Pontiac Vibe twins, the hot sales of the Scion xA/xB "tall wagons," the hatchback design of the current Toyota Prius and the success of the Suzuki Aerio SX hatchback shows Americans do want this class of vehicle.
In the near future, Honda will introduce to the US market the small but very roomy Fit hatchback as a 2006 model, and Honda will likely sell vehicles based on the design of the recently-introduced FR-V/Edix tall wagon for the US market, too.
These class of vehicles will likely down the road benefit from new engine technologies, whether hybrid drivetrains, clean turbodiesel engines, or eventually fuel cell power.
Given the fact that Mozilla-branded browsers default to Google search and the fact that many Internet Explorer 5.x/6.x users install the Google taskbar add-on, Google should not waste their money to developing their own web browser, even it they use the Gecko rendering engine developed by the Mozilla team.
Google should spend its resources to develop improve their search engine and their online advertising system instead.
Big Media hates people like Matt Drudge and the "bloggers in their pajamas". Granted, they don't have the investigative resources that the big news organizations have, but they have the power to raise questions about the direction of the news.
I have to disagree on that assessment. On the blog run by conservative radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt, he calls bloggers Open Source reporting, where information is shared openly and reviewed by other people on a very large scale to ensure accuracy, just like Linux with its publicly-reviewable source code of the operating system and its components.
However, there are still enough people around who have used older Netscape versions (3.x and 4.x versions) that the current Mozilla 1.7x default interface are still comfortable for them.
To each his or her own, I guess. (shrug)
Plus, the Lord of the Rings trilogy were some of the most successful movies ever to heavily use CG, but just as much energy seems to have been put into finding good locations, creating elaborate and convincing physical sets, and finding the right flesh-and-blood actors.
The reason why The Lord of the Rings movies are so well-liked was the fact they used as many natural locations as possible to provide a background to "layer" in the CGI effects. A good example is the from The Fellowship of the Ring when they were travelling down the Anduin River; much of the background is CGI, but that was in addition to scenes filmed at various locations in New Zealand itself.
I think Mozilla really "matured" when Version 1.6 came out in February 2004.
Much faster than previous Mozilla versions, Mozilla 1.6 also had much improved page-rendering accuracy and improved the mail and newsgroup client.
The current Mozilla 1.7.3 is very fast and also has even better page-rendering accuracy than 1.6.
Actually, given the increasing number of broadband users in the USA, the difference in download times for FireFox and Mozilla 1.7.3 is no longer significant.
But Mozilla has a few things that FireFox lacks right now: 1) better page-rendering accuracy and 2) a very good mail and newsgroup reader.
Mind you, I would actually prefer switch to Mozilla 1.7.3 suite instead of FireFox, mostly because 1) it does a very good job rendering even complex web pages, 2) it has an excellent mail and newsgroup reader, and 3) most of today's Windows-based machines have way more than enough hard disk space to accommodate Mozilla 1.7.3.
I am kind of puzzled by why Mozilla FireFox is hip.
As a user of Mozilla regularly since Version 1.6 (I'm running 1.7.3 right now), Mozilla has pretty much most of the more useful features in FireFox, especially the tabbed browsing windows and popup blocker. And I do like Mozilla 1.7.3's excellent mail and news reader, too.
These more effective exhaust treament systems are killed by the high levels of sulfur in todays US diesel fuel.
:-)
The biggest problem is that the high level of sulfur compounds will destroy the new generation of catalytic converters that double as particulate traps too easily due to the sulfur compounds acting akin to sulfuric acid. It should be noted that these new catalytic converters will work safely if the sulfur level is under 200 parts per million, and the initial EPA standard that will be phased in starting next year will be around 20 parts per million. These new catalytic converters/particulate traps should allow a diesel-powered vehicle to meet the Ultra-Low Emissions Vehicle (ULEV) standard easily.
The nice thing about these clean-burning diesels is that we can eventually make all our large vehicles (minivans, light trucks and SUV's) all switch to diesel power starting in 2006. That right there will improve fuel efficiency as much as 45%; imagine a Honda Odyssey minivan with a turbodiesel engine rated at 240 bhp but with far more low-end torque than the current 255 bhp gasoline engine found on the 2005 Odyssey. It could also mean mean EPA milage ratings of 28 mpg city, 39 mpg highway!
While it might be understandable that we may have slowdowns of installing Windows XP Service Pack 2 on a current install of Windows XP, what about this scenario: a from-scratch install of Windows XP Home/Professional from a CD-ROM that already has Service Pack 2 code on the installation CD-ROM disc?
I can probably say that a from-scratch install of Windows XP Home/Professional SP2 will probably have very little or none of the performance issues mentioned in the article.
I think the most important advantage of using nuclear propulsion is the fact you can have essentially a rocket engine running at low power for many days at a time. That could have one major upside: instead of a nine month trip one way between Earth and Mars the transit time could be reduced to something like six weeks!
At only six weeks' transit time, that drastically reduces the life support needs of the astronauts in terms of consumables like breathable air and water in the spaceship, which means less expense for building the habitable part of the spaceship.
I think the final multinational manned mission to Mars will be something like Zubrin's Mars Direct plan, but the spacecraft will be assembled in Earth orbit and use nuclear engines powered by very safe pebble-bed nuclear reactors.
Actually, the area off the coast of southern Massachusetts could be great for windpower. If we can just convince the homeowners on Nantucket Island and Martha's Vineyard to allow the construction of high-power wind turbines just off the coast of these islands both of these islands could essentially have most of their electric power needs met by these wind turbines.
The reason why the Soviets managed to get the first satellite into space is simple: a brilliant Russian rocket designer named Sergei P. Korolev, who passed away in 1966.
People forget that the Soviet rocket program in a very secret group called RNII was very underestimated by everyone else, because in the 1930's before the Yezhovchina Great Purge the Russians probably had some of the most advanced rocket development programs in the world--in some cases more advanced than the German programs at the time! Despite the Great Purge, Korolev managed to keep the majority of his development team at RNII together, and Korolev was actually working for SMERSH (Soviet counterintelligence) in the latter half of the 1940's studying German developments in rocket technology. That's why by the early 1950's the Soviet rocket program was probably more advanced than the US program, and that's why they were able to build the R-7 rocket designed by Korolev's team (which was far larger than any US equivalent rocket at the time) that carried the large-sized Soviet nuclear bombs with the side benefit of being able to launch payloads into orbit. The sheer size of the R-7 was also the reason why the Russians were able to launch unmanned probes around the Moon and launch the first manned flights. Because the R-7 was designed as an ICBM, it meant the ability to launch in a fairly short countdown sequence and used launch pads that could erect the rocket into firing position fairly quickly, too; that's why the Russians were able to launch reconnaissance satellites so quickly and had a pretty advanced space weapons program.
We would known it fairly quickly by two means:
1. The DSPS satellites used to track infrared signatures from rocket launches would have detected the very strong and distinct IR emission from a nuclear explosion.
2. Radiation detectors downwind would be triggered from the point of explosion due to fallout particles.
Given that we didn't get that distince IR signature and there are no unusual radiation levels detected in South Korea, Japan, and Russia in the area around Vladivostok, it's very likely the explosion was caused by a muntions dump explosion or a munitions train exploding.
Mind you, I doubt AMPAS--which tends to surprisingly politically conservative--would want to nominate Fahrenheit 9/11 for Best Picture.
The reason is simple: AMPAS does not want to run the risk of a potentially massive consumer boycott. If there is ANYTHING Hollywood really worships it's the bottom line, and they don't want to see the movie industry suffer an organized economic boycott.
Remember the fiasco with The Reagans miniseries from last fall? The very fear that consumers were going to boycott the Super Bowl over the showing of this miniseries made then-CBS President Les Moonves kibosh its showing on CBS and the miniseries was shown on Showtime premium pay-cable channel instead.
And AMPAS actually was quite a bit annoyed by Michael Moore's acceptance speech aftering winning for Bowling with Columbine.
For one good reason: the majority of new external peripherals are now connected by USB 1.1/2.0 ports.
I mean look at the majority of multifunction (printer/scanner/fax) printers now being sold--they use USB ports almost exclusively to connect back to the computer. And scanners are now mostly connected to computers using USB ports, too.
IEEE-1394 ports will have their place, mostly for connecting devices that need large amounts of data being transferred to the computer (digital camcorders, professional grade scanners, etc.).