Cluster bombs, the main purpose of which is to kill personnel (“soft targets”), have been the subject of wide debate for some time now. Views range from comparisons with landmines to the “they are perfectly legal for our use” viewpoint. Cluster bombs are no new thing in modern warfare; the US used them extensively in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Cluster bombs are interesting in that they do not do selective targetting: they have the same effect as a “shotgun of bombs” would, except over an area about the size of two or three football fields. It is easy to imagine why the UN and Red Cross (among others) oppose the use of cluster bombs.

Aside from the problem of indiscriminate killing due to the use of cluster bombs, a second problem exists with cluster bombs that affect people for generations after their use: unexploded ordinance. The “bomblets” dropped from cluster bombs do not always explode: between 1 and 40% do not. This means that very often unexploded bomblets end up laying in unexpected places (backyards, roofs, etc) waiting to explode when picked up by the unsuspecting civilian. Much like land mines, in fact, except they’re prettier and look more like toys.

Now, this is nothing new. Probably everyone knows about this already. What is new and interesting is that the UN has discovered unexploded bomblets in Lebanon, left there to do more killing and maiming – more than 100,000 350,000 1,000,000 [estimated] as of today September 26th, 2006. Not only is that almost unbelievable (and somewhat sickening), it is aggravated by the fact that 90% of them were dropped 72 hours before the end of the conflict – when Israel knew there would be a resolution. It’s a bit like leaving a lasting impression for the generations to come, sort of a going away present. Nice!

[Edit: I changed the numbers twice as they started increasing. I thought that 100,000 was a lot: I didn't know it would turn out to be more than ten times that as time went on.  That is really unbelievable.  But, on the other hand, its only 1% of the total number of landmines worldwide - just a shame they were so incredibly necessary.]

This was, of course, all over the news (why, I’m not sure – it’s certainly not good publicity for the IDF): a clearly marked news vehicle was attacked by the IDF in Gaza City a few days ago.

While I’m no expert on what a “clearly marked vehicle” really is, it doesn’t take a genius to make a quick observation and realize that this isn’t a tank, a man with a rocket launcher, an ambulance, or any other favorite target (reading skills do help, however). I’ve never met anyone in the IDF, but the more I hear about the performance of these guys, the more I think “Are these guys even trained? What the hell?”

The timing couldn’t have been more perfect: the kidnapping of two journalists in Gaza ended in their release just after the IDF tries to blow two reporters to hell. Which side is better: the one that abducts and returns two journalists, or the one that just outright attempts to murder two journalists? But wait – there was an official apology: “If journalists were hurt, we regret it“. I like the sound of that! The first part, with the If, indicates that noone really knows who shot who and whether or not anyone was injured. Fair enough – I mean, the IDF can’t really be expected to keep track of everyone they try to kill, can they? But then the real beauty is in the second part: we regret it. That simple phrase tidily sums up the longer sentence, “We’re certainly not sorry about what we did, we’re just sorry that we got caught”. I like it!

Next time I do something illegal – nothing like shooting missles at anyone, mind you – I’ll simply issue an apology using that sentence as a template. Get caught speeding? Easy! “If I was speeding, I regret it”. Problem solved. A game with matches and gasoline quickly go afoul and burn down a city block? Have no fear! “If I set a building on fire, I regret it”. Accidentally kill a bunch of UN observers? “If I killed a UN Observer, I regret it”. You can use your own imagination and come up with your own cleverly-worded excuses as well, give it a try!

It sounds good, people have shown to accept it as good enough reason to forget about whatever illegal act you’ve committed, and you get off the hook. Thanks, IDF!

I ran into an interesting “feature” when using two FIFO’s in Linux for bi-directional communication between two processes. Basically, I kept encountering a deadlock no matter what I did, and I couldn’t figure out why.

Here’s the scenario: You have two separate processes (not necessarily parent/child) and two separate FIFO’s. Although a FIFO can be used for bi-directional communication, each one will be set up to be uni-directional: Process #1 will write to FIFO #1 and read from FIFO #2, while Process #2 will write to FIFO #2 and read from FIFO #1. Doing things this way allows Process #1 to pass data to Process #2 via FIFO #1, and Process #2 can pass a result back to Process #1 via FIFO #2. This provides an easy way to keep both processes synchronized, because each process will block when reading the FIFO streams.

Each process blocks when opening both FIFOs as well (during initialization, for example) until both a read and a writer are present (which is normal). Once they are opened, Process #1 writes some data (a number, for example) to FIFO #1. Process #2 should receive the data and return a value via FIFO #2. However, no matter what I tried, the data never reached Process #2, and both processes were in deadlock. But if only a single FIFO was used (where data was passed from Process #1 to Process #2 only), everything worked fine!

If you’re now asking, “Just what the hell is a FIFO?”, then stop reading here. If you want to know what the problem was and the solution, keep reading.

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When I have a fit of nostalgia I often resort to breaking out the Commodore emulator and tooling around with some games from my childhood. When I was a kid (or really, I was in my pre-teen years I guess) I had both a VIC-20 and then later a C64. The C64 I got after I nagged my dad to buy it from a friend of mine that had gotten sick of it and his mom wanted to sell it (along with the thousand or so pirated games). It was basically third-hand when I got it.

Anyway, the VIC-20 I got from an uncle of mine years before that, and it came with one or two cartridges – and that was it. No disks (or tapes) of any kind. The one cartridge that I remember that came with it was called “Pirates Cove“. Unfortunately, the cartridge came with no instructions, and it didn’t seem to work when I plugged it in. I thought it was worthless.

My first programming experiences came with this computer after I visited a computer repair shop (I think one of the “F” keys broke off or something). They handed me a whole bunch of Ahoy! and Commodore Gazette magazines – which gave me the keys to unlock the world of programming.

There were some drawbacks to my first “type-in” programs. They took me hours to type in. (I don’t even know how I realized that those magazines had programs printed in them that could be typed in and run – it seems kind of unusual that I just “figured it out”. Well, that’s how it happened) Not only did they take forever to do, they only lasted as long as I left the computer on. So after typing in a game for a day, I’d leave it on for a few days (or before it locked up) to play my new creation.
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I just added a project that I had recently been working on to my site. It’s called “VisualODF”. If you want the introduction, go here: VisualODF Introduction. If you’d like to see the documentation directly, click this link: VisualODF Documentation.What exactly is this thing? Without repeating the introduction, it is a framework (bunch of classes, really, but I like to throw that word in) written in C++ that form the basis of an application for detecting objects from video streams in the context of a UAV mounted camera. It does everything but the detection part: opening video streams, playing them, capturing frames, sending them to a video display and custom image processing algorithm, display of processed video frame, and display of obstacles on a TCAS-II type display as well as other custom widgets.

It uses QT4, ffmpeg, and SDL to accomplish this. Probably the most useful bits of the classes are the TCAS display itself, the widget plugins (TCAS widget, the so-called “pieDisplay” widget, and a video display widget), and the video-related classes. All of the classes use QT.

The idea behind this was that it would allow a student to actually work on the detection algorithm part of the application, rather than trying to figure out how to open a video stream and grab frames from it or how to convert YUV to RGB.

Hopefully a student somewhere will end up using this for something useful!

As the proxy-war of the USA continues in Lebanon, I continue to be amused by the stream of propaganda flowing down the tubes of the internet – and especially by the people that buy into it. Just yesterday I ran into (or was stuck with, really) a man that was very accurately able to regurgitate about 75% of the mass of the entire propaganda effort of the USA on behalf of Israel.

After I threw up a little bit in my mouth, I tried to pretend everything was ok – I politely listened and realized “man, propaganda works!“. Does it work on just “mentally sluggish” individuals (or perhaps “mentally lazy”), or does everyone fall prey to it?

It seems some people will believe anything if it sounds “good enough”; the US media (and administration) are master workers at packaging the latest US-backed horrific acts (whatever they happen to be at the time) into a white-washed box of reasoning that some people genuinely believe. Not only believe, but often profess to have known all along. These are the same people that are quick to regurgitate the latest neologism released by the White House and pass it around in normal conversation like remembering a good old story from church camp. The point is: listening to the media (US or Israeli) will make you feel good about who your country is killing, because you know in the end that you are right. Of course, your country is just trying to make the world a better place, it doesn’t hate anybody, and this has nothing to do with oil, strategic positioning, preparing to attack Iran – it has everything to do with saving those two… or was it three.. soldiers that were kidnapped. Wait, is that this bloodbath is all about – a couple of kidnapped soldiers? Even if you believe your trusty Fox News, and strain your brain for a little bit of logical connection here, you can only come to one sane conclusion: After each side kidnapped a couple of guys from the opposite side (both did it), things got pretty god damn bloody pretty god damn quick.

Nevermind what the professed reason for this war is; just as long as people keep believing the five myths that sanction Israels’ war crimes, you should still be able to sleep well at night. And perhaps you won’t throw up a little bit in your mouth like I did when I met such a pearl of propaganda, as I did yesterday.

We’ve all seen the massacred bodies at the Qana II cleansing (and perhaps some remember the 106 civilians that were murdered there 10 years ago as well, the “Qana I” massacre) – gory pictures of children, unbelievable acts committed by the IDF (or should I say, “they sure got those terrorists”?). Well, those aren’t my favorite pictures. And photos of the complete and wanton destruction of parts of Lebanon? Those, while good ones, also aren’t my favorites. Although there are so very many to choose from, my favorites are below:

Sometimes pictures are worth a thousand words. This is pretty difficult to take “out of context”: you see some Israeli children sending messages of love on the bombs to be used to kill their neighbors. I’d say thats somewhat… extreme? Hateful? Makes it easier to understand how the early the superiority complex is engrained in children there : making a joke out of killing your neighbors, as if they were merely animals (or not even that), is sickening.

But have no fear: certainly the destruction of Lebanon is necessary. The USA says so (this had been planned much further in advance than the date of any soldier being kidnapped), and don’t expect the destruction to end very soon. In a short few weeks we will begin hearing the multitude of connections between Lebanon and Iran (and Syria), and the US will be “forced into action”.

“Disgustingly predictable” – there should be a word for that. Maybe I’ll invent one.