PHP or Hypertext Preprocessor
November 23, 2009PHP, or PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor, is a widely used, general-purpose scripting language that was originally designed for web development, to produce dynamic web pages. It can be embedded into HTML and generally runs on a web server, which needs to be configured to process PHP code and create web page content from it. It can be deployed on most web servers and on almost every operating system and platform free of charge. PHP is installed on over 20 million websites and 1 million web servers.
PHP was originally created by Rasmus Lerdorf in 1995 and has been in continuous development ever since. The main implementation of PHP is now produced by The PHP Group and serves as the de facto standard for PHP as there is no formal specification. PHP is free software released under the PHP License, which is incompatible with the GNU General Public License (GPL) because of restrictions on the use of the term PHP.
PHP has evolved to include a command line interface capability and can also be used in standalonegraphical applications.
 |
|
| Usual file extensions | .php, .phtml .php5 .phps |
|---|---|
| Paradigm | imperative, object-oriented |
| Appeared in | 1995 (1995) |
| Designed by | Rasmus Lerdorf |
| Developer | The PHP Group |
| Stable release | 5.2.11 / 5.3.1 (5.2.11: 2009-09-16; 2 months ago / 5.3.1: 2009-11-19; 3 days ago) |
| Preview release | 6.0.0-dev[1] |
| Typing discipline | Dynamic, weak |
| Major implementations | Zend Engine, Roadsend PHP, Phalanger, Quercus, Project Zero |
| Influenced by | C, Perl, Java, C++, Tcl[citation needed] |
| Influenced | PHP4Delphi, Falcon |
| Programming language | C |
| OS | Cross-platform |
| License | PHP License |
| Website | http://www.php.net/ |
PHP originally stood for personal home page. It began in 1994 as a set of Common Gateway Interface (CGI) binaries written in the C programming language by the Danish/GreenlandicRasmus Lerdorf. Lerdorf initially created these Personal Home Page Tools to replace a small set of Perl scripts he had been using to maintain his personal homepage. The tools were used to perform tasks such as displaying his résumé and recording how much traffic his page was receiving. He combined these binaries with his Form Interpreter to create PHP/FI, which had more functionality. PHP/FI included a larger implementation for the C programming language and could communicate with databases, enabling the building of simple, dynamic web applications. Lerdorf released PHP publicly on June 8, 1995 to accelerate bug location and improve the code. programmer This release was named PHP version 2 and already had the basic functionality that PHP has today. This included Perl-like variables, form handling, and the ability to embed HTML. The syntax was similar to Perl but was more limited, simpler, and less consistent.
Zeev Suraski and Andi Gutmans, two Israeli developers at the Technion IIT, rewrote the parser in 1997 and formed the base of PHP 3, changing the language’s name to the recursive initialism PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor. The development team officially released PHP/FI 2 in November 1997 after months of beta testing. Afterwards, public testing of PHP 3 began, and the official launch came in June 1998. Suraski and Gutmans then started a new rewrite of PHP’s core, producing the Zend Engine in 1999. They also founded Zend Technologies in Ramat Gan, Israel.
On May 22, 2000, PHP 4, powered by the Zend Engine 1.0, was released. As of August, 2008 this branch is up to version 4.4.9. PHP 4 is no longer under development nor will any security updates be released. On July 13, 2004, PHP 5 was released, powered by the new Zend Engine II. PHP 5 included new features such as improved support for object-oriented programming, the PHP Data Objects extension (which defines a lightweight and consistent interface for accessing databases), and numerous performance enhancements. In 2008, PHP 5 became the only stable version under development. Late static binding has been missing from PHP and has been added in version 5.3. PHP 6 is under development alongside PHP 5. Major changes include the removal of register_globals, magic quotes, and safe mode. The reason for the removals was that register_globals had given way to security holes, and magic quotes had an unpredictable nature, and was best avoided. Instead, to escape characters, magic quotes may be substituted with the addslashes() function, or more appropriately an escape mechanism specific to the database vendor itself like mysql_real_escape_string() for MySQL. Functions that will be removed in PHP 6 have been deprecated in PHP 5.3 and will produce a warning if used.
Many high-profile open-source projects ceased to support PHP 4 in new code as of February 5, 2008, because of the GoPHP5 initiative, provided by a consortium of PHP developers promoting the transition from PHP 4 to PHP 5.
PHP currently does not have native support for Unicode or multibyte strings; Unicode support will be included in PHP 6 and will allow strings as well as class, method and function names to contain non-ASCII characters.
It runs in both 32-bit and 64-bit environments, but on Windows the only official distribution is 32-bit, requiring Windows 32-bit compatibility mode to be enabled while using IIS in a 64-bit Windows environment. As of PHP 5.3.0, experimental x64 bit versions are available.
PHP is a general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for web development. PHP generally runs on a web server. Any PHP code in a requested file is executed by the PHP runtime, usually to create dynamic web page content. It can also be used for command-line scripting and client-side GUI applications. PHP can be deployed on most web servers, many operating systemsplatforms, and can be used with many relational database management systems. It is available free of charge, and the PHP Group provides the complete source code for users to build, customize and extend for their own use. and
PHP primarily acts as a filter, taking input from a file or stream containing text and/or PHP instructions and outputs another stream of data; most commonly the output will be HTML. Since PHP 4, the PHP parser compiles input to produce bytecode for processing by the Zend Engine, giving improved performance over its interpreter predecessor.
Originally designed to create dynamic web pages, PHP now focuses mainly on server-side scripting, and it is similar to other server-side scripting languages that provide dynamic content from a web server to a client, such as Microsoft’s Active Server Pages, Sun Microsystems’ JavaServer Pages, and mod perl. PHP has also attracted the development of many frameworksrapid application development (RAD). Some of these include CakePHP, Symfony, CodeIgniter, and Zend Framework, offering features similar to other web application frameworks. that provide building blocks and a design structure to promote
The LAMP and WAMP architectures have become popular in the web industry as a way of deploying web applications. PHP is commonly used as the P in this bundle alongside Linux, Apache and MySQL, although the P may also refer to Python or Perl.
As of April 2007, over 20 million Internet domains were hosted on servers with PHP installed, and mod_php was recorded as the most popular Apache module. Significant websites are written in PHP including the user-facing portion of Facebook, Wikipedia (MediaWiki) Yahoo!,MyYearbook, Digg, Joomla, WordPress, YouTube in its early stages, Drupal and Tagged.
FOR TUTORIALS, PLEASE CLICK THIS YES TO PROCEED IN TUTORIALS
2012 FULL MOVIE TRAILER
November 20, 2009
Watch 2012 Online -From the director of “disaster” movies like Independence Day, Godzilla, and The Day After Tomorrow, Robert Emmirich brings another epic movie that is full of special effects, action-filled about destroying the world. It seems like he is bent to world destruction.
This fall of 2009, 2012 will come earlier. The destruction of the world is coming sooner. But don’t worry, the dog will survive. But billions of people won’t. Like Emmerich’s other movies, the White will once again be destroyed, climate change will once again makes feel its wrath, oceans will rise and wipe us all, and the church in Rome will fall apart.
The story of 2012 comes after the end of the 5, 126-year era of the Mayan Long Count calendar on December 21, 2012, the of the northern hemisphere’s winter solstice. It is believed that it is the end of the human race. Add to that, for the first time in 26, 000 years, the sun will be aligned with the Milky Way.
The movie boasts a stellar cast, which includes John Cusack, Amanda Peet, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Thandie Newton, Danny Glover, Woody Harrelson, and Oliver Platt.
2012 follows the Curtis family: Jackson Curtis (played by Cusack), a divorced father and a failed novelist who occasionally works as a taxi driver, while his ex-wife Kate (played by Peet) and their children now lives with her new boyfriend, Gordon (played Thomas McCarthy).
Three years ago, the government discovered that due to the explosions on the sun, the earth’s core is heating up because of the neutrinos and will soon destabilize the planet’s crust, birthing volcanoes and shifting tectonic plates. When U. S. government geologist Adrian Helmsley (played by Ejiofor) learned about this, he prompted to inform the president’s chief of staff, Carl Anheuser (played by Platt), who then rushed to inform the President (played by Glover), who eventually told the terrible news to her daughter (played by Newton). The government secretly established what Anheuser calls “the most important timetable in the history of mankind”- a schedule for the most important and most wealthy to be evacuated in confidential modern day Noah’s arks which they have hidden in China. Only a select group of people and the different kinds of animals (told you just like Noah’s) will be allowed to board them, and if they got lucky, the human race can survive.
Three years later, the Curtis family, Jackson with his son and daughter (Liam James and Morgan Lily) decided to go camping to the Yellowstone Park. And in there, he meets the loony radio dj, Charlie Frost (played by Harrelson) who believes that the Mayans are correct about their prediction that in 2012, the human race will meet their oblivion.
Over the past days, vast cracks are found within the fault lines in California. But Despite the government’s call that everything is alright, Jackson didn’t seem to believe them. So he went to save his family, including Kate, from the Earth’s crust displacement occurring around them.
And from there, the adventure to journey to the arks in China, planned and built to be the mankind’s only way to survive, begins to start. As they go through all that, we can see the destruction of the world taking place. The Yellowstone is destroyed by a super volcano. Los Angeles began to crack. Massive earthquakes begin to shake South America, destroying Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires. Washington D. C. is flooded by a huge tsunami. St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome began to crumble, burying thousands of devotees praying. And witness other major cities facing the end of days.
The whole film will be full of special effects to create those massive calamities to bring to the audience. We will get to see billions of people being killed on a different scale.
So if you want to catch this new doomsday film, it will be shown in theaters on November 11, 2009 or you can Watch 2012 full movie online by clicking on the image below.
Why didn’t they show this on 2012?
Manny Pacquiao batters Miguel Cotto for TKO win
November 16, 2009
Pacquiao knocked Cotto down once in the third round and again in the fourth, pummeled him repeatedly and easily lifted the World Boxing Organization welterweight belt from the Puerto Rican with a 12th-round stoppage. The time was 55 seconds into the final round, as referee Kenny Bayless leaped between the fighters to save Cotto a more savage beating and ignominious end.
Cotto came out strong and landed some hard punches, but Cotto couldn’t deal with the speed. Pacquiao was landing three shots for every two Cotto did early. After the knockdown in the fourth, Cotto’s offense was nonexistent as he spent most of the last two thirds of the fight fending off Pacquiao’s onslaught.
Cotto landed in single digits in power shots in every round from the fifth forward.
Pacquiao nearly had the stoppage after the 11th when Cotto trainer Joe Santiago walked onto the ring apron and waved his hand at Bayless.
It appeared he was going to stop the fight, but then Bayless and ringside physician James Game spoke and allowed it to continue. It was only extending the misery as Pacquiao poured it on in the 12th.
When the fight ended, the crowd began to chant, “We want Floyd!” It was a reference to Floyd Mayweather Jr., the other man with a claim to the top of the boxing pound-for-pound list.
Pacquiao, who has won championship belts in five divisions and beat the linear champion in two others, can no longer be knocked as a small man who was beating washed up fighters.
In Cotto, he took on an elite and powerful welterweight whose only loss came under suspicious circumstances to Antonio Margarito last year. There is suspicion that Margarito’s gloves were loaded for that fight, though it has never been proven.
But Pacquiao proved he was able to not only take a welterweight punch, but rock him repeatedly. It was a magnificent performance and will create public demand for a fight with Mayweather.
“I want to see him fight Mayweather,” Pacquiao trainer Freddie Roach said.
Santiago said Pacquiao hit harder and was stronger than expected. Cotto injured his left shoulder in the eighth.
My Life As A Broken Hearted
August 6, 2009I started to know myself when i was in high school. In my high school life, i knew a girl named Cheryl Galan Pulmones, girl who had the same religion where i am faithful, being a Christian, Baptist. She became my very close friend and then turn to mutual understanding. But because of being so dull and ignorant person, someone else from her family criticize my english grammar through mobile phone of my mother. My Mom told me that i must not text her so we lost communication for a year .I had a classmate named Jirah Mae Delmo whom i’m fall in. But for almost 3 years that she was my classmate, i’d never been talk to her even to say “hello?” “How are you?” because i’m so afraid that she will know that i loved her. But until i graduated, i’d never been do it. And it made me so mad to myself because of it.
Before i graduated in high school, i dreamed and wished to get Marine Engineering at JBLU but because my parents frankly told me that they can’t afford to sent me in that school, i begin to lose hope to have that kind of course. My parents wanted me to enter and get the course BS Computer Science at Hercor College, one of the leading private college here in Roxas City. And that was June 2007, i became a student of Hercor college. By July 2007, one of my classmate in high school named Shawn Lozada gave me a girl texmate. That girl named Eden Claire Porras. A college student from WVCST. She came from Mlang, North Cotabato. We became friend, turn to close friend and then by September 2007, she became my first girlfriend. For the first time in my life, someone else came by and picked me up. And that’s her. I was so inlove to her and i can’t believe to myself that she accepted me as her boyfriend even though i am ugly. But because we are too far from each other, in days passed by i missed her. I asked for the number of her Mom in Mlang and she gave it to me. i texted her Mom just to say that i am claire’s boyfriend. i was so tense that timed. But her Mom accepted me to be her daughter’s boyfriend. That timed, i was so thankful to God that she gave me a girl like her. By October 2008, i forgot the exact day, i received a text message. And that message came from Cheryl Pulmones. That timed, Cheryl had her boyfriend from Jamindan, Capiz. But, what a mistaked i did, i fall inloved to Cheryl even Claire loved me, I leave Claire just to be with Cheryl. Me and Claire last for 1 year, 2 months and day and that day was November 13,2008. By November 25, 2008, i became Cheryl’s boyfriend. But while me and Cheryl going on, somethings i noticed from her. Something that i can’t explain. By March 15, 2009, she leave me without any pity. She told me that why we should continue our relationship, , she don’t love me and never love me or try to love me since we are. I said to myself “ginawa nya lang akong panakip butas”. Honestly, for the first timed in my life, i cried that whole night. While i was crying, suddenly it came in my mind to take suicide. But the imaged of my family shown in my mind, telling that they need me.
March 16, 2009 was my final examination and that day, i learned nothing. i’ve got a low scores in my 7 subjects because before that day, i was so depressed and angry to myself. I was so regretful of leaving Claire. But before Cheryl leave me, Claire accepted me again for the second time, and that was my second chance to her. That was March 15,2009.
We decided to continued what we had started before. Everyday was a brand new day for me because she was mine, my girlfriend.
June 2009, i was shocked and started to scare because she told me that she can’t promise anything instead she will do anything. From that day, it made me to become sad. It came into my mind that she is planning to leave me. By August 5, 2009 3:00pm in the afternoon, she leave me. She has two more boyfriends. And made me to become stupid guy. I didn’t cry instead i putched the concrete wall and in came into my mind that she wants a guy who is rich, smart and has a very nice body. Then i asked myself that ” Why i became like these? ” ” Why i was born with not a pleasing looks?” “Why i am so poor?”
By 7:00pm, i decided to go outside, to express my emotion. i took a walked, a long walked with an absent mind. I tried not to cry and tried to accept it. I bought a can of redhorse for the first time in my life. I drunk it and it was bitter in my tonge. Then suddenly, i felt something in my face falling and dropping(tears of loneliness and sad). I bought another can of redhorse, i drunk it until in the last dropped of it. Then suddenly, i putched the monument with my fist where i was seating. I did not fell the pain in my fist while it was bleeding. I went home with a sad face but when I was in home, i tried to smile instead.
Because of what happened,i went somewhere and anywhere just to entertain myself alone. I went malls and anywhere with no one else, just myself. i walked along the road without thinking where I am going. I’m just like an insane person yesterday, today and tomorrow because of what happened between me and Claire. But now and to the present, whenever, wherever, and whoever I am now, STILL I REALLY LOVE THAT GIRL WHO MADE ME TO FEEL THAT I AM IMPORTANT EVEN JUST FOR YEARS IN MY LIFE.
I will treasured and be proud that i knew Eden Claire Porras ,and became a part of me, my girlfriend now my ex-girlfriend, even she leave me hanging and lonely and even we ended in a very very sad story, still I love her so much. I will be here for her always as her sincere Babe or Pooh(close friend).
I REALLY LOVE YOU VERY MUCH EDEN CLAIRE PORRAS …
from the one who’s getting insane inloving you, forever…
REDZ
Peom To Myself (as a broken hearted)
August 5, 2009I Hate Myself
I hate myself for being alone. I hate myself for being a loner. I hate myself for watching the Disney Channel when I could be talking to my friends.
I hate myself for being inexplicably in love with a girl who would never love me back.
I hate myself for not being able to let go, whenevery day I swear to God that I will.
I hate myself for crying every time I express these emotions to a piece of paper. I hate myself for crying right now.
I hate myself for not letting my personality come through when I need it most.
I hate myself for trying too hard in everything I do just to watch myself fail in the end.
I hate myself for being a pessimist just so that I can never be disappointed.
I hate myself for knowing my favorite band more than my best friend.
I hate myself for being not smart. I hate the fact that everyone knows I’m not smart. I hate that that’s all they will ever know about me.
I hate myself for emailing a girl I haven’t seen in three years because I don’t want him to think I’m a bitch. I hate myself for thinking too much of people’s opinions.
I hate myself for thinking that I’m better than everyone else, even if it’s true. I hate myself for just typing that because I know (deep, deep down) that it’s not true.
I hate myself for being so ugly. I hate myself for thinking that when someone says I’m handsome, I think that they are just completely lying to my face. I hate myself for almost crying when the woman who gave me a haircut the other day told me I was handsome.
I hate people who tell me I’m handsome. Or have a nice smile. Or have nice hair. While we’re on the subject, I just hate people.
I hate people who say ‘You can talk?’ or ‘Why are you so quiet?’ I hate myself for wanting to punch those people in the face every time I hear them say that.
I hate people thinking I’m sweet and innocent. I hate myself for coming across as sweet and innocent. (I’m not.)
I hate myself for avoiding my friends on purpose. I hate myself for not knowing why.
I hate myself for not being able to say ‘How are you?’ to someone without having a nervous breakdown.
I hate myself for being a show-off, when there really is nothing for me to show-off.
I hate myself because I can.
DANCE WITH MY FATHER AGAIN by LUTHER VANDROSS
July 21, 2009DANCE WITH MY FATHER AGAIN by LUTHER VANDROSS
Back when I was a child, before life removed all the innocence
My father would lift me high and dance with my mother and me and then Spin me around ’til I fell asleep
Then up the stairs he would carry me
And I knew for sure I was loved
If I could get another chance, another walk, another dance with him
I’d play a song that would never, ever end
How I’d love, love, love
To dance with my father again
When I and my mother would disagree
To get my way, I would run from her to him
He’d make me laugh just to comfort me
Then finally make me do just what my mama said
Later that night when I was asleep
He left a dollar under my sheet
Never dreamed that he would be gone from me
If I could steal one final glance, one final step, one final dance with him
I’d play a song that would never, ever end
‘Cause I’d love, love, love
To dance with my father again
Sometimes I’d listen outside her door
And I’d hear how my mother cried for him
I pray for her even more than me
I pray for her even more than me
I know I’m praying for much too much
But could you send back the only man she loved
I know you don’t do it usually
But dear Lord she’s dying
To dance with my father again
Every night I fall asleep and this is all I ever dream
MY LIFE WOULD SUCK WITHOUT YOU LYRICS with VIDEO
MY LIFE WOUL SUCK WITHOUT YOU
Please read our terms of service before continuing…
My Life Would Suck Without You lyrics
Guess this means you’re sorry
You’re standing at my door
Guess this means you take back
All you said before
Like how much you wanted
Anyone but me
Said you’d never come back
But here you are again
‘Cause we belong together now, yeah
Forever united here somehow, yeah
You got a piece of me
And honestly,
My life (my life) would suck (would suck) without you
Maybe I was stupid for telling you goodbye
Maybe I was wrong for tryin’ to pick a fight
I know that I’ve got issues
But you’re pretty messed up too
Either way, I found out I’m nothing without you
‘Cause we belong together now, yeah
Forever united here somehow, yeah
You got a piece of me
And honestly,
My life (my life) would suck (would suck) without you
Being with you
Is so dysfunctional
I really shouldn’t miss you
But I can’t let you go
Oh yeah
‘Cause we belong together now, yeah
Forever united here somehow, yeah
You got a piece of me
And honestly,
My life (my life) would suck (would suck) without you
‘Cause we belong together now, yeah
Forever united here somehow, yeah
You got a piece of me
And honestly,
My life (my life) would suck (would suck) without you
Warfare Weapons
July 15, 2009
Introduction
Since their introduction in 1945, nuclear explosives have been the most feared of the weapons of mass destruction, in part because of their ability to cause enormous instantaneous devastation and of the persistent effects of the radiation they emit, unseen and undetectable by unaided human senses. The Manhattan Project cost the United States $2 billion in 1945 spending power and required the combined efforts of a continent-spanning industrial enterprise and a pool of scientists, many of whom had already been awarded the Nobel Prize and many more who would go on to become Nobel Laureates. This array of talent was needed in 1942 if there were to be any hope of completing a weapon during the Second World War. Because nuclear fission was discovered in Germany, which remained the home of many brilliant scientists, the United States perceived itself to be in a race to build an atomic bomb.
When the Manhattan Project began far less than a microgram of plutonium had been made throughout the world, and plutonium chemistry could only be guessed at; the numbers of neutrons released on average in U-235 and Pu-239 fissions were unknown; the fission cross sections (probabilities that an interaction would occur) were equally unknown, as was the neutron absorption cross section of carbon. experiment. Although talented people are essential to the success of any nuclear weapons program, the fundamental physics, chemistry, and engineering involved are widely under-stood; no basic research is required to construct a nuclear weapon. Therefore, a nuclear weapons project begun in 1996 does not require the brilliant scientists who were needed for the Manhattan Project. For many decades the Manhattan Project provided the paradigm against which any potential proliferator’s efforts would be measured. Fifty years after the Trinity explosion, it has been recognized that the Manhattan Project is just one of a spectrum of approaches to the acquisition of a nuclear capability. At the low end of the scale, a nation may find a way to obtain a complete working nuclear bomb from a willing or unwilling supplier; at the other end, it may elect to construct a complete nuclear infrastructure including the mining of uranium, the enrichment of uranium metal in the fissile isotope U-235, the production and extraction of plutonium, the production of tritium, and the separation of deuterium and 6 Li to build thermonuclear weapons. At an intermediate level, the Republic of South Africa constructed six quite simple nuclear devices for a total project cost of less than $1 billion (1980’s purchasing power) using no more than 400 people and indigenous technology.
Fissile materials can produce energy by nuclear fission, either in nuclear reactors or in nuclear weapons. A country choosing to join the nuclear weapons community must acquire the necessary weapons (fissile) material (U-235 U or Pu-239). It is generally recognized that the acquisition of fissile material in sufficient quantity is the most formidable obstacle to the production of nuclear weapons. Fissile material production consumes the vast majority of the technical, industrial, and financial resources required to produce nuclear weapons. For example, production of fissile materials —- highly enriched uranium (HEU) and plutonium —- accounted for more than 80 percent of the $1.9 billion (1945 dollars) spent on the Manhattan Project.
Some analysts believe that the difficulties of enriching uranium are offset by the simpler weapon designs which enriched uranium allows. In the United States, HEU is considered less expensive to use in a weapon than plutonium. Operation of a reactor to produce plutonium requires the extraction and purification of uranium and, in some cases, at least modest enrichment. Given international safeguards on reactors using enriched uranium obtained from another nation or heavy water moderated reactors, a proliferant may be forced in any case to construct an enrichment facility. The choice is likely to be determined by the indigenous availability of uranium and the national surplus (or shortage) of electricity.
Acquisition of a militarily significant nuclear capability involves, however, more than simply the purchase or construction of a single nuclear device or weapon. It requires attention to issues of safety and handling of the weapons, reliability and pre-dictability of entire systems, efficient use of scarce and valuable special nuclear material (SNM) (plutonium and enriched uranium), chains of custody and procedures for authorizing the use of the weapons, and the careful training of the military personnel who will deliver weapons to their targets. In contrast, a nuclear device used for terrorism need not be constructed to survive a complex stockpile-to-target sequence, need not have a predictable and reliable yield, and need not be efficient in its use of nuclear material. Although major acts of terrorism are often rehearsed and the terrorists trained for the operation, the level of training probably is not remotely comparable to that necessary in a military establishment entrusted with the nuclear mission. The United States has developed a complex and sophisticated system to ensure that nuclear weapons are used only on the orders of the President or his delegated representative. Some elements of the custodial system are the “two-man rule,” which requires that no person be left alone with a weapon; permissive action links (PALs), coded locks which prevent detonation of the weapon unless the correct combination is entered; and careful psychological testing of personnel charged with the custody or eventual use of nuclear weapons. In addition, U.S. nuclear weapons must be certified as “one point safe,” which means that there is less than a one-in-a-million chance of a nuclear yield greater than the equivalent of four pounds of TNT resulting from an accident in which the high explosive in the device is detonated at the point most likely to cause a nuclear yield. It is believed to be unlikely that a new proliferator would insist upon one point safety as an inherent part of pit design; the United States did not until the late 1950’s, relying instead upon other means to prevent detonation (e.g., a component of Little Boy was not inserted until after the Enola Gay had departed Tinian for Hiroshima). It is also unlikely that a new actor in the nuclear world would insist upon fitting PALs to every (or to any) nuclear weapon; the United States did not equip its submarine-launched strategic ballistic missiles with PALs until, at the earliest, 1996, and the very first U.S. PALs were not introduced until the mid-1950’s, when American weapons were stationed at foreign bases where the possibility of theft or misuse was thought to be real. Nonetheless, any possessor of nuclear weapons will take care that they are not used by unauthorized personnel and can be employed on the orders of duly constituted authority. Even -— or, perhaps, especially -— a dictator such as Saddam Hussein will insist upon a fairly sophisticated nuclear chain of command, if only to ensure that his weapons cannot be used by a revolutionary movement. It is also quite likely that even the newest proliferator would handle his weapons with care and seek to build some kind of safety devices and a reliable SAFF system into the units. On the basis of experience, one might expect to observe significant nuclear planning activity and the evolution of situation-specific nuclear doctrine on the part of a new proliferator who would have to allocate carefully the “family jewels.” The development of a nuclear strategy might be visible in the professional military literature of the proliferator.
