| Saturday,
May 4, 2002 There is a LOT of mail.
I'll get up what looks informative. Begin with this. I cannot vouch for
its authenticity, but I know of nothing to contradict what it says.
This was forwarded about 6 times before it
got to me.
Notice that paragraph...
"Feel free to pass this email around and
send me any feedback or questions."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ From: "Saul
Kramer" <kramers2@popeye.cc.biu.ac.il To: <kramers2@popeye.cc.biu.ac.il
Sent: Thursday, April 25, 2002 4:53 AM Subject: Tales from Jenin
Hi all
I'm writing this email after having returned last
night from the emergency army call up that sweetly interrupted my life 3
weeks ago. I'm writing this email for simple reasons, to tell you the
truth about what happened in Jenin over the last 2-3 weeks and to share
some of the stories and incidents that we had.
Its pretty sad seeing and hearing the lies CNN, BBC
and all the others have been feeding the world when you have seen a
completely different picture yourself.
Feel free to pass this email around and send me any
feedback or questions.
Let me just get one thing cleared, there was no
massacre in Jenin, I repeat no massacre in Jenin!!! (ill get back to this
later)
My reserve battalion was stationed on the northern
and eastern border of Jenin with the purpose of ensuring the enclosure of
the area during the Defensive Shield Operation took place. We were divided
amongst a number of roadblocks and defensive positions with the main
purpose of preventing terrorists leaving Jenin to carry out attacks inside
Israel and also from escaping during the operation. We were also
responsible for monitoring the entrance of the Press and humanitarian aid
going into Jenin, and also Palestinians needing to leave Jenin for
humanitarian reasons. I myself together with eleven other soldiers manned
a small roadblock at the northern tip of Jenin, which was one of the main
thoroughfares for traffic entering and exiting the area.
Jenin is not a big town. The refugee camp is a small
part of Jenin and the pictures repeatedly shown on TV are of a small
section (10% -15%) of the refugee camp that was destroyed. The refugee
camp is where the terrorists have mainly operated and harboured factories
and storage facilities for weapons, explosive belts etc. Many of the
recent suicide bombers have strapped themselves up in this refugee camp.
What is also very fascinating is that UNWRA (United Nations Work and
Relief Agency - part of the UN) has been responsible for the refugee camps
over the last 50 years and has allowed terrorist infrastructure to
flourish under its nose.
In the fighting that took place in the refugee camp,
children were used as human shields by the terrorists. One of the brigade
commanders told us this last Saturday night that they were shot at in the
small alleys of the camp.
They returned fire only to hear the cries of young
children to which they immediately stopped shooting and prayed that they
had not killed any children. They hadn't.
The armies respect and consideration for the life's
of innocent civilians is of a high standard. For this reason, 23 of our
own boys were killed in the Jenin fighting. If we had no regard for the
life's of innocent civilians, 23 sons, husbands and fathers would be at
home with their families now. They were the price we paid for the high
moral and ethical standards upheld during the fighting.
During the week of the incursion into Jenin the area
was a closed military zone. However contrary to what was reported,
humanitarian aid was allowed in and I myself personally checked many of
the hundreds of trucks that were allowed in to deliver supplies to the
Palestinians. This was carefully coordinated with the army to ensure that
innocent civilians would receive the supplies and to minimise the risks of
those entering the areas.
For a few days after the fighting had stopped, the
area was closed off to the press. This is when the rumours of the massacre
began despite the army press giving detailed briefing sessions to the
media on the situation. So why was the area closed to the press and what
did we seemingly have something to hide? Simply, the refugee camp had been
booby trapped by the terrorists and minefields awaited those that entered.
Soldiers inside the refugee camp told me of not being able to move 5
meters at a time without having to diffuse another pipe bomb or mine. Many
of the houses destroyed were done so by bombs planted by the very
residents of the camp. Some of the dead bodies were also booby trapped
with grenades! and mines awaiting the Israeli soldiers. (The Palestinian
death toll stands at below 40 with maybe another 20 or so buried in the
rubble of which most has been cleared up. This was also told to us by
embarrassed reporters who entered the area eagerly awaiting to report an
Israeli massacre of Palestinians only to be disappointed to find minimal
destruction.)
The media. Last Sunday while myself and my good
friend Ben were on duty at the roadblock at the time when no press were
allowed to enter Jenin, we spotted a jeep trying to evade the roadblock
through an adjacent field. We managed to stop the jeep and discovered a
group of French Journalists who had managed to enter Jenin and were now
trying to leave. We followed the normal procedure of questioning them,
checking their vehicle and identification. This process sometimes takes a
while because we have to phone another army base who then checks the
identities with the Israeli authorities which includes the intelligence
operations. Anyway, it turned out that one of the supposed French
journalists is actually a Palestinian terrorist on Israel's wanted list.
He was taken away by the police together with the other real French
journalists. Bet you never heard about that one on TV.
Last Thursday, friends of mine on duty at another
outpost a few kilometres away from me spotted two young kids walking in
the middle of the day with black backpacks on their backs. The two kids
entered an abandoned structure about 800 meters away from the outpost and
left without the bags. The kids thought they had gone unnoticed. It was
later discovered that the bags contained weapons, explosives, an Israeli
army uniform with a red paratrooper beret. The plan was for a terrorist to
pick up the loot at night, dress up as an Israeli soldier and attack the
outpost. We had already received intelligence reports 5 days earlier
warning of a terrorist dressing up as a soldier and entering one of the
outposts.
Avi, a good friend of mine studying together with me
at Bar Ilan was stationed in Nablus (Shchem) during this operation and
told me the following: They took over a house in Nablus as a stronghold in
order for the operation to clear out the terrorist infrastructure there.
While in the house, they did not use the electricity to charge their cell
phones. They did not touch or eat any food left in the house. They made a
concerted effort not to use any furniture in the house. When they left the
house a few days ago during the pullout of Nablus, they cleaned the house
and left money on the table. I have heard this reported from soldiers that
were also in Beit Lechem, Tulkarm, Kalkilya and Jenin.
On Monday morning this week, a UN bus entered Jenin
carrying a UN rescue team from Britain. The team included doctors and
other rescue personnel who get dispatched around the world to help with
rescue operations. Four hours later the bus returned through our roadblock
and they stopped and we had a chance to chat a little. The first thing
they said is that this was the biggest waste of time for them and they
would be catching the next flight out of Israel. One of the doctors told
us that one of the "massacred" bodies he examined was that of a
man that had been dead for two years. What a shame that the Palestinians
dug him up to add to the death toll.
As my friends and I packed up yesterday ready to
head for home we joked at how the whole world considers us to be monsters
and how one day we might all be charged for war crimes. We felt good for
having served our country once again and we hope that something was
achieved in this operation. What lies ahead is still uncertain. What
became so clear to me is the importance of seeing things in the right
context and perspective. If all that happened these last 3 weeks was an
Israeli incursion into the Palestinian areas, then yes, maybe we don't
look so good in the worlds eyes. But looking in the context of the history
of Israel and our longing to live peacefully side by side with our Arab
neighbours, we cannot let terror to exist and destroy our dream. I pray
and hope that new Palestinian leadership emerges that will want to make
this world a better place for its people.
Saul Kramer
Forwarded by Gary R. Utter, http://www.syndicomm.com/
The Old Testament solution to troublesome
neighbors was extermination. The Romans modified that to slaughter plus
selling many of the losers into slavery. There was also Diaspora. We live
in more squeamish times. I for one have not forgotten that Jenin cheered
the falling of the Twin Towers.
And I still believe that the only way to peace in
the Middle East is stable and nearly impervious borders. Build walls, and
make them strong.
Hi Jerry,
Welcome back.
I came across these articles that I thought you
might find of interested.
Firstly there is this article ( http://www.sigmaxi.org/amsci/amsci/issues/comsci02/Compsci2002-01.html
) which talks about Lewis Fry Richardson and his work on mathematics and
the study of warfare.
This led me to a book called "How to stop a
war: The Lessons of Two Hundred Years of War and Peace. How and why wars
start...and how we can prevent the next one" at ( http://www.jim.dunnigan.com/howtostop.htm
).
The web page has "General Observations on Two
Centuries of Mayhem" which contains interesting observations from the
book. Worth a read.
- Paul
Richardson's Statistics of Deadly Quarrels
remains a classic work that ought to be studied by everyone interested in
the subject, but in fact few are aware of it. Dunnigan and I have had our
disagreements, but he is always worth paying attention to.
I used Richardson's work in a Study of Stability
for the US Air Force Office of Plans and Doctrines when I was doing that
kind of work.
You mention you don't have a batch process for
resizing images.
IfranView (http://www.irfanview.com/) is a lovely
viewer/editor which includes an absolutely crackerjack batch convesion
process (File/Batch) which allows resizing, rotating, and other useful
options.
Highly Recommended!
Welcome Home, Everett
And indeed I have recommended it, but it wasn't
on the laptop I took to Rome... I agree, it's a great program.
Jerry,
This may be of interest:
http://www.linuxandmain.com/tech/robformats.html
This strikes me as cold hard rationality, which I
wish I saw more of in the Linux weltanschauung.
--Erich Schwarz
Indeed. Thanks.
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope found it, but you still can't see the
Mote :) http://msnbc.com/news/745445.asp?pne=msn
Edward Maner
Thanks! It's gorgeous.
Jerry,
If USB 2.0 does replace Firewire as you predict it
won't be "good enough", it will be yet another step backwards
courtesy of Intel Inc. The so called "backwards compatibility"
of USB 2.0 is a myth that will trap many users into forking out far more
for new equipment than is required and force them to handle a whole new
set of "stupid knowledge" they shouldn't have to.
So you buy a new computer with USB 2.0 ports, or add
a USB 2.0 card to your existing machine, to go with your new high speed
USB 2.0 CDRW drive or external HDD. Think your expenditure is over?
Hardly, now you have to replace your USB 1.1 hub(s) with new (much more
expensive, and thus far almost unavailable from what I've seen) USB 2.0
hub(s) (well, actually it's now more a router than a simple hub like USB
1.1 uses) - otherwise if you plug your new USB 2.0 peripheral into the old
USB 1.1 hub it'll simply run at USB 1.1 speeds - 11 Mb/s instead of 480
Mb/s. So now to run a mixture of USB 1.1 devices (printers, mice,
keyboards, etc.) as well as new USB 2.2 devices (e.g. CDRW drives,
scanners, HDDs, etc.) on your system you need to know which ones are which
and have the appropriate USB hubs to support them, otherwise all the USB
2.0 hubs and devices will be throttled back to run at only USB 1.1 speeds.
This is idiotic! It's only there because stupid Intel refused to see
common sense and allow USB to remain what it was originally designed to be
- a cheap, easy to use serial port for slow devices like keyboards, mice,
scanners, etc. They had to take on Apple, TI, Sony, etc. in the fast
serial device arena that was already well catered for by Firewire. Just to
show they wouldn't yield ground to anyone. No caring or concern for their
customers, just corporate hubris and stupidity. Check out http://www.mackido.com/Hardware/USB2.html
for more info on this disaster.
And then there's 800 Mb/s Firewire, what's the point
of USB 2.0 then (by the middle of this year)? At least with F/W you don't
have any stupid (and expensive) hubs to worry about, just make sure you
put all your 800 Mb/s F/W devices earlier in the chain than your 400 Mb/s
devices and you're done, everything will run at it's maximum throughput
and there are no topology problems to screw you up. USB 3.0 anyone? Yet
more new hubs, yet more topology problems and "stupid knowledge"
to keep "gurus" in a job when computers and peripherals should
be getting easier to use, not more difficult. USB 2.0 is NOT "good
enough", it's not even close.
Finally - what's all this fuss about "Legacy
free" Compaq boxes anyway? They should be the standard! I simply
cannot believe that after all these years of USB 1.1 and Firewire Dell,
IBM, Compaq, et al are STLL making machines with serial and parallel
ports, and maybe one lonely USB 1.1 port if you're lucky (so to use a USB
keyboard and a USB mouse you need a hub straight away), instead of all of
them now having 2-3 USB and 1-2 Firewire ports! This is particularly dumb
on notebooks and laptops that are so short of rear panel space as it is.
It's time to drop these dinosaur serial and parallel ports and replace
them with something more 21st century like USB and F/W.
-- David S.
"You have a good knowledge of Unix and a
girlfriend. Not many people can say that." -- Cryptonomicon, Neal
Stephenson.
Well, clearly you know more about market
conditions than Compaq and Dell, who insanely continue to build machines
with legacy equipment. I don't expect Firewire to vanish, but I do believe
it will lose market share to USB 2. Whether I approve of that isn't
important.
The real problem with USB on laptops is the power
requirements.
Jerry,
I have USB 1 and FireWire connections on my laptop
and I agree with you about the possibility of USB 2 taking over. I do see
one advantage for FireWire in the peripherals arena and that is; it is a
smaller form factor which is important for cameras and other types of
small peripheral devices which connect infrequently for uploading and down
loading of data.
Larry Woodmansee
Firewire will be around a long time for
peripherals. But five years is a fairly long time in this rcket.
Recently you mentioned you were awaiting delivery of
a new, big LCD monitor. Have you seen the new ViewSonic VG191? I've been
using one for about three months now. It is big, bright, sharp, and
features very good color saturation (thanks to the 500:1 contrast ratio
and 250 nits brightness). This ViewPanel is even easier on my eyes than
the 17" ViewSonic Triniton monitor it replaces. As one who also
suffers from extremely poor eyesight, I really appreciate this quality
large display for long sessions on line, editing documents or retouching
photos.
R. Pownell
I am looking at flat screen monitors now with a
view to converting at least one of my operations to those.
And Roland reminds us of an old story I used to
repeat often:
In the days when Sussman was a novice Minsky once
came to him as he sat hacking at the PDP-6. "What are you
doing?", asked Minsky. "I am training a randomly wired neural
net to play Tic-Tac-Toe." "Why is the net wired randomly?",
asked Minsky. "I do not want it to have any preconceptions of how to
play." Minsky shut his eyes. "Why do you close your eyes?",
Sussman asked his teacher. "So the room will be empty." At that
moment, Sussman was enlightened.
There are a number of Minsky enlightenment
stories. Most true.
This story is very much worth looking at:
http://english.pravda.ru/main/2002/04/30/28149.html
Apparently someone has found the oldest map in the
world, possibly 120 million years old. (!!!!?) complete with ancient
writing. It is a high grade relief map in stone with a glass like surface,
and corresponds to what is known about the geology of the area from that
time. It was found among the primitive peoples of the Ural mountains area.
The article is completely serious in tone, and very
detailed. Now we get to see if this is an elaborate hoax or for real.
I have saved the page with photos, and can send it
zipped up if desired.
Michael Zawistowski z@gis.net
Please visit http://RadioFreeNation.com
Thank You
Well, I found it worth looking at, but I don't
believe a word of it.
Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect
Science by Atul Gawande Medical errors kill more people each year than
auto accidents, breast cancer or AIDS. Can automating medicine prevent
tragedies like the Andrea Yates case? Reviewed by Ivan Oransky, M.D.on
04/09/02 at Salon.com http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2002/04/09/gawande/print.html
Link to book at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0805063196/qid%3
D1020191010/ref%3Dsr%5F11%5F0%5F1/002-2577012-1683203
-- John Bartley, telcom admin, USBC/DO, Portland OR
- Views are mine. 503.326.2231...147 http://palmwireless.cjb.net Wireless
FAQ for PalmOS(r) http://celdata.cjb.net Handheld Cellular Data FAQ
Cochran estimates that it was as late as 1938
that physicians ceased to do more harm than good and kill fewer people
than they saved. Prior to Pasteur and the germ theory of disease there was
little doubt...
An analysis by the SAMBA team of the recent
Microsoft document release that restricts GPL implementation of the CIFS/SMB
protocol:
< http://us1.samba.org/samba/ms_license.html
>
This throws even more fuel on the fire that instead
of competing with GPL, Microsoft is simply trying to hide behind their
lawyers and look good to the anti-trust court. Otherwise, why bother
releasing this, especially with the GPL restrictions.
Come on Microsoft - compete!!! If you are convinced
of your technical superiority, why waste time and effort bashing the GPL.
But then, as Roland noted, Samba blows Win2k out of the water as far as
file serving performance goes. And it would somehow be cheaper to spend
$millions on lawyers to fight the GPL (hurting everyone and not advancing
anything) rather than spending $millions on fixing the problems (helping
everyone, including Microsoft, since they would end up with a better
product).
This logic escapes me.
Pete Flugstad
I don't have enough information to comment.
Hi Jerry,
I love your column and I've looked forward to it
every month (and now every other week I suppose) since 1995. I've often
heard you recommend PC Power & Cooling cases and have always meant to
ask you about the amount of noise they make. I realize that it is more of
a function of the CPU fan and (to a lesser degree) the power supply fan,
but I was hoping that maybe you had given the noise factor some thought
when reviewing cases.
Keep up the great work and let me say that whatever
they're paying you, it's not nearly enough!
James
PC Cool makes quiet fans for extra cost. I am not
particularly bothered by computer noises to begin with. I know some people
are, but I don't hear as well as they do.
And Roland reminds us of the death of an able and
honorable adversary
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Obit-Lebed.html
-- ------------------------------------------------------------ Roland
Dobbins <mordant@gothik.org>
and then there is:
I admit, I am biased. I believe that
"free" software has a place in the world and that it represents
a milestone in the development of computer related technologies.
That aside, I came across this link at ( http://www.oreillynet.com/cs/weblog/view/wlg/1364
) that talks about a letter ( http://www.gnu.org.pe/resmseng.html
) written by Dr. Edgar David Villanueva Nuñez, Congressman of the
Republica of Perú in which he replies to a Microsoft Executive about a
letter the executive sent regarding Peru passing a bill requiring the
government use free software.
It's a devastating reply that cuts though all the
hype and fud typical of large corporate interests.
I wonder how long this politician will be able to
stay in power, now that he has perhaps made a powerful enemy?
- Paul
Indeed. Indeed.
And Roland tells us of quantifying Heisenberg:
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992209
and
http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0102069
--
And Jim Warren tells us 19 things it took him 30
years to learn: (this turns out to be taken from a Dave Barry article so I
have deleted it. No credit was given in the mailing I got.)
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