A friend of mine brought a NTFS (Windows XP) hard drive that had been “erased” by a virus of some kind. I said I’d try to recover the lost data, which was unreadable to Windows.

After wasting some time undeleting a bunch of garbage on some other unimportant partitions, I realized that the main NTFS partition had not been automatically mounted for me – meaning there might be a problem with the partition itself. After manually attempting to mount the partition, I got a message that the boot sector was corrupt. So what to do?

NTFS partitions have a backup of the boot sector located on the last sector of the NTFS partition. There are probably various programs out there that one can pay for to restore this backup copy to its rightful place. There might even be a “Microsoft way” of doing things, which I can only guess requires you to agree to the terms of some EULA and give away any rights you have to your great collection of polka MP3s. Instead, all you need to do is this one line (as root):

mount -t ntfs /dev/sdg1 /media/tmp -o errors=recover

where you need to replace “/dev/sdg1″ with your NTFS partition location (I connected this drive with an external USB carrier) and “/media/tmp” with the location you’d like to mount the fixed partition. That’s all! Once you’ve mounted it, it’s fixed automatically and might even be bootable again (if this is the only problem you have).

This will even work if you accidentally begin to copy data over the beginning of your NTFS partition, since the copy of the boot sector is at the end of the partition. Note: This only works with kernel versions 2.6 and newer.  Can’t get a much easier fix than that!

Glad to find out I’m really not the only person that wondered this: what about the other guilty men? Granted, G.W. and co. didn’t gas anybody; they didn’t invade Kuwait – just Iraq. However, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians have died as a result, and thousands of US soldiers have been killed. After torturing, murdering, and brutally killing innocents, why are we supposed to forget the depth of badness done by the Bush regime after a dictator created by us is killed?

Who encouraged him to invade Iran in 1980 (his greatest war crime)? The US did. Who sold him the chemical weapons components he used against Iran and the Kurds? The US did. Our support of the dictator now disposed of by the US wasn’t talked about during his trial; it wouldn’t have been, as that would directly involve the USA with his war crimes.

Let’s imagine, for a moment, a world where people are responsible for their actions. Next let’s imagine a powerful world leader, directly responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths in an illegal war based on lies and ulterior motives (sounds similar to that Saddam fellow, eh?). It seems obvious that a person displaying such an abuse of power resulting in the deaths of so many people should somehow be forced to accept responsibility for such an action. Makes sense, doesn’t it?

In the real world, this rarely happens. Saddam ultimately (unwillingly, he had no choice) accepted punishment for his actions – in part for the deaths that were directly attributed to his actions as a leader. So what about all the other bad guys, the ones that are responsible for the brutal deaths of so many innocent people in Iraq as a result of an egregious abuse of power? When will they be held responsible? Is Iraq the only place in the world where the government believes in this strange “leaders taking responsibility for their actions” concept?

If leaders were held responsible for their actions, then G.W. and co. would have thought twice about lying to America and attacking a country illegally. Because, as we just recently experienced, when you’re the big man in charge – you never imagine its going to be your neck in the noose.

Ahh, the big holiday time of year. It has always been exciting – usually it means no school (or work); it’s a time to stay at home and play video games, hang out with the friends or family, or frolic through the snow. The end of December and beginning of January brings back memories of school vacation and visits to the grandparents, and playing outside for hours until my gloves-made-of-socks became soggy and wet, making throwing snowballs ineffective (as they stick to the sock-gloves). This year, however, I did a couple of new things that I’m sure I will remember fondly: I broke my thumb and got teargassed.

Not in the same day, mind you. The thumb just so happened to get stuck in a car door (not in the nice part that has the rubber strips, that would have been far more pleasant). Aside from the pain that came shortly after the crunch noise, I can certainly say that it was the most awake/alive I’ve felt in some time (what is it about pain that does that? Is it the accompanying adrenalin?) Incidentally, alcohol wasn’t involved, which is notable since it seems to always be included as part of the seasons festivities, which somehow increases the possibility of things like this happening.

As far of the teargas goes, first a bit of explanation: in other countries (like the USA), you can easily buy pepper spray, tasers, shotguns, and other nice self defense mechanisms from your local WalMart. In Germany, one of the few things you can buy along those lines is teargas. Now, I didn’t know that before I found out what it smells/tastes like, but hey – live and learn. Anyway, some jokers put some in the ventilation system in a bar that I happened to be in a few nights ago, which led to a prompt evacuation of the place (its a rather small place, so it took under a minute).

I imagine if the same thing happened in the US, it’d be an “act of terrorism”, probably with a terrorist conviction too boot for the juvenile that pulled the prank. After the air cleared and one of the guys I was there with loudly proclaimed that he was the responsible one, we all shuffled back in and the DJ put some tunes back on. But hey – it made the night more interesting.

At this rate, I hope that New Years is a little less exciting.

The installation of SciPy from source would be straightforward if it weren’t for the additional libraries LAPACK and BLAS that need to be installed as well. While I’m not new to compiling packages from source and resolving dependencies, this one stumped me – I ended up with this error:

/usr/local/lib/libflapack.a(slaruv.o): relocation R_X86_64_32S against `a local symbol’ can not be used when making a shared object; recompile with -fPIC

That’s telling me that I need to recompile using the “-fPIC” option, which I had already done. Strange. Anyway, if you want to get this installed the easy way, stop trying to compile this from source and do this instead:

Open up Yast, and add this repository to your sources:

http://repos.opensuse.org/science/SUSE_Linux_10.1/

If you are using Suse 9.3, 10.0, or 10.2, simply change the “SUSE_Linux_10.1″ to “openSUSE_10.2″, “SUSE_Linux_10.0″, or “SUSE_Linux_9.3″ in the provided link. After you’ve added this repository, open “Software Management” and search for ‘SciPy’. You should find it. You can additionally search for ‘NumPy’, ‘Lapack’, and ‘blas’ (although the dependencies should be sorted out automatically).

I would recommend additionally installing ‘matplotlib’ for plotting. If you do that, you’ll need to grab the matplotlibrc file and stick it in your .matplotlib directory. The only option I had to change to get plotting to work was the backend – I chose “QtAgg”.

Thats it! When trying to set this up, I found lots of Suse users with installation/compilation issues – but nobody seemed to know this simple method of installation.

First of all, this device does work fine in Linux. But unfortunately, this USB device won't be recognized by the Linux kernel and so you won't be able to watch all your Family Guy, Simpsons, or Aqua Teen Hunger Force episodes on your PC without adding one line of code to the kernel module driver (perhaps new kernels will eventually recognize it).

There are more than just one type of WinTV USB2 device: the one I have has "Model 42014 Rev D197 Lot # 4405" on the back of it. If you do a 'lsusb', you should see this somewhere in the output:

The device ID is the problem : the driver for this particular model is looking for "2040:4200", not "2040:4201". So, you simply need to edit the driver code and add the right number. To do this, you need to have your kernel source installed and you'll have to know how to configure your kernel for your other hardware. If you're up to the task, then take your favorite editor and open the file '/usr/src/linux/drivers/media/video/em28xx/em28xx-cards.c '. At about line 249 you'll see this:

You'll want to change it to look like this:

You're simply inserting this line:

Save the changes, then go back to your '/usr/src/linux' directory, and do a normal 'make' and make 'modules_install'. As long as you're running the same kernel as the one you are compiling the modules for, you can now do a "modprobe em28xx" and you should be in business! Of course, there are other modules you'll have to load (or compile into the kernel) to get video working in general (look at the 'Video For Linux' section); but this will at least get your hardware talking.

Ok, this isn't really a complete "HOWTO" - it's just a summary of the experiences I had with getting NVidia drivers to work properly with a 64-bit Linux distribution with my current hardware (although this will equally apply to a 32-bit distro).

It seems that there are an ungodly number of things that can go wrong (when they do go wrong) with NVidia drivers on the Linux platform. Usually things work fine after installation, be it by using the supplied NVidia installer or whatever method your distribution suggests. Unfortunately, my problem was unsolvable by all means that you will find on the web. That's right: I went through everything short of replacing my entire PC to solve this problem. What was my final solution? Well, if you're looking for a solution to your own NVidia woes, I would suggest you not read the rest of this paragraph and skip to the next one where I give you some hints on what to try when troubleshooting. My solution: I flashed the video card BIOS to that of a completely different vendor. While that doesn't make sense that you'd have to do this (and you won't find anyone from NVidia that will suggest you should do it), it was what I had to resort to to get things to work.

Symptoms: When any 3D (openGL) application is started, the PC will lock up hard - usually requiring a manual reset (meaning finger push button reset). The PC may not lock up hard, but freeze and become garbled instead; you may even be able to continue working but with a garbled screen (I couldn't). To reproduce this problem, simply run 'glxinfo' in a console - that should be enough to do it.

This occurs at least with the following distributions: Gentoo Linux, Ubuntu, and Suse - regardless of whether a 32-bit or 64-bit distribution is being used.

My hardware:
Motherboard: ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe
Graphics card: Gainward 7800GT PCIe
HDD: 2x Maxtor 6V300F0 300GB
PSU: 650 Watts
CPU: AMD X2 4400
RAM: 2x 1GB Kingston DDR400

First of all, you have to have actually successfully installed the NVidia drivers. Unless you've disabled it, you will see an NVidia splash screen when X starts. If you don't have this part right, then there are many resources on the web to help you depending on your distribution. It's usually always better to do the install using the method your distro prefers: emerge on Gentoo, apt-get for Ubuntu, or yast for Suse. If you instead try to use the supplied installer from NVidia's website, you could run into library problems later (which is the case with Gentoo).

Here is the list of things to check when you have the lockup problem (in no particular order):

1 - Passing Kernel Parameters

There are some kernel parameters that may or may not influence the performance or stability of the driver. They are:

You should try passing these to the linux kernel when you boot - or some combination of them. "noapic" and "acpi=off" seem to be popular.

2 - IRQ Conflicts

Your NVidia board should have an assigned IRQ. When the nvidia driver module is loaded, execute this:

You should see something like this:

Of course your output will look different. The point here is that the "nvidia" module has an interrupt number, and that it doesn't share it with other peripherals. In my case you see that it is sharing an interrupt with ohci1349 (firewire) and sky2 (ethernet) drivers. Try disabling or moving the peripheral that is sharing an IRQ number with the nvidia module. I disabled the hardware that shared with the nvidia card (of course, to no avail).

If you have no interrupt assigned to your video card at all, check that in your BIOS settings (of your motherboard) that you have "Assign IRQ to Video" enabled (or something similar).

One more note: the "type" of interrupt assigned to the nvidia board should be "level", not "edge". The driver module probably won't load if it is not "level".

It has been noted that Creative boards (SoundBlaster whatever, Audigy, etc) like to conflict with NVidia boards. If you have one, move it to a different slot or take it out temporarily for testing.

3 - Check For a Motherboard BIOS Upgrade

Normally there should be no reason to upgrade your motherboard BIOS. On occasion, something may have been fixed; but more often than not you're bound to introduce a new problem. If you start asking around for help from NVidia, they will tell you to do this, even if you're sure you don't need to (or if there is no update available for your board) - so you may as well get this item out of the way.

4 - Strange Motherboard Settings

Some BIOS settings can interfere with your NVidia card. If you have a disabled NX/XD-Bit (NoeXecute/eXecuteDisable) , you should try changing that. If you have onboard virus protection, disable it. If you have overclocking related BIOS options, turn them off. For example, my ASUS has an automatic overclocking feature - it should be disabled (later you can turn it on if you get things working, of course). Also, "PEG Link Mode" should be normal.

While you're at it, you can disable all onboard things you're not using: firewire, USB (if you can deal without USB mouse/keyboard), serial / parallel, audio, etc. That way you can eliminate them as possibly conflicting with your NVidia card.

5 - MEMTEST86

Ok, this should actually be #1, but I had assumed in the beginning that your system already has a known good and stable configuration. This is absolutely essential: run memtest86 . Some say you should run it for 10 hours (or overnight); the only time I ever found errors on a bad RAM module they appeared after a minute or less.

If you have an Ubuntu or SUSE boot CD, it has memtest86 as an option (it can't get easier than that). Otherwise, download this small (but excellent!) recovery CD and choose the memtest boot option.

If you have any RAM problems whatsoever, you need to fix this first - it's probably the culprit.

6 - AGP and Your xorg.conf File

There are a couple of settings that could affect your stability issue; primarily if you are using AGP (I am not). I haven't heard that these affect PCIe in any way, but I'm putting this here anyway since it seems to be a common problem among lots AGP users. From the NVidia README:

Option "NvAGP" "integer"

Configure AGP support. Integer argument can be one of:

Value	Behavior	0	disable AGP	1	use NVIDIA's internal AGP support, if possible	2	use AGPGART, if possible	3	use any AGP support (try AGPGART, then NVIDIA's AGP)

Please note that NVIDIA's internal AGP support cannot work if AGPGART is either statically compiled into your kernel or is built as a module and loaded into your kernel.

Try 0 and see what happens. If it works, then you have AGP issues. You might have to remove AGPGART support from your kernel and use the right NvAGP option.

Also, look for "RenderAccel" and give it the parameter "false":

Option "RenderAccel" "false"

Later you can enable this if you get things working.

7 - Manually Upgrade Drivers

Even though I said you should use the proper installation method depending on your distro, try uninstalling the drivers and getting the newest from NVidia's website. Note: If you have an older NVidia card, you need to use the "Legacy" drivers supplied by your distro (and by NVidia).

Be careful with updating your drivers this way, as you can end up with library problems / improper links that could lead to further problems.

8 - Incompatible Libraries

It has been noted on some distros (Gentoo) that if you install the driver using NVidia's install mechanism instead of the default "right way" (emerge, apt-get, urpmi, whatever) you'll run into problems with old libraries lying around in places they shouldn't - which end up causing conflicts and odd behavior. If you've done this, then I can't really help you - but you should probably start by uninstalling any versions you have installed and manually looking for leftover library bits and removing them. Good luck.

9 - Reinstall X, Mesa, and Dependencies

Ok, this is a pain to do, but it's one of the things I did. Completely reinstall X and its dependencies - or if it's easier, just reinstall your whole distribution.

10 - Different Distributions?

Ok, perhaps a different distribution will fix your problem. Why? Well, different kernels might work differently with your board. If you don't mind trying out a different distribution, give this a shot. You won't find the real cause of your problem this way, however.

SUSE linux was the only distro I tried that worked 100% perfectly after an install (it detected my motherboard, and that I have a RAID controller, which it informed me would not be supported in RAID mode, which I already knew but no other installer chose to tell me). Ubuntu, Mandriva, and Gentoo could give you anywhere from a few to many niggles after installation.

11 - Vanilla Kernel Compilation

Another thing that NVidia support will ask you to do (this means go to kernel.org and get the latest official stable release and use that as your kernel). When you do this, I recommend only enabling the bare minimum you need (and the options that are required for the NVidia driver - see this page for more info.)

12 - Stability / Heat Issues

If you are actually able to use the drivers for 3D applications for a short period of time (and thereafter a lockup), then you don't have the same problem as I did, but you might have a stability problem due to overheating. You can monitor the temperature of your GPU in Linux, but I won't go over how to set that up. If available, I would suggest borrowing Windows from a friend, installing it and the NVidia Windows drivers, and then installing the NVidia NTune utility. It should come with a stress test that will notify you of any stability problems. While you're at it, check to see if 3D applications work properly in Windows for you (in my case, they worked flawlessly).

If you do have a heat problem, you probably should return your card. If you can't, then you could attempt to pull off the fan/heatsink contraption and apply fresh thermal paste to the offending chips. Google around for guides on how to do this.

One more thing: cheap power supplies will give you never-ending stability issues. Make sure that you have a big enough capacity power supply. Also, not all power supplies are the same: 500W from one brand will not "be the same" as 500W from another manufacturer. If you have a no-name cheapy powersupply with borderline specs for your system, get a newer better one (I did this unnecessarily - but it was cheaper than getting a new MB or video card).

13 - Maxtor Drives and NForce Incompatibility

The particular model drives I have (Maxor 6V300F0) have a nasty bug that causes instability with NForce chipset motherboards. Not all drives have this bug; certain firmware revisions do. There is a fix out there that Maxtor will not give you for some reason. Do a search to find out where to download the fix (I don't have it; I didn't need it, since my firmware revision was new enough). I don't know why Maxtor won't give out the fix (probably they are afraid of helping a hard drive firmware hacking scene, where people simply change the firmware in their drives that are identical to other models and gain hundred of extra gigabytes. Well, that's my guess.) In any case, I don't think I will be buying Maxtor again.

Last But Not Least : Video Card BIOS

None of the above items were in any way related to my problem. In the end, I took my video card (Gainward 7800GT) and flashed the BIOS with one from an eVGA 7800GT.

Initially I flashed with a slightly newer version of the Gainward 7800GT ROM, but that made absolutely no difference. I wrote the possibility of a BIOS problem off at that point. Later, short of buying a new board, I took the leap of faith and flashed with the eVGA BIOS.

So why does this work? What is the problem? Why should the BIOS affect whether or not the NVidia drivers will work on a particular platform (fine on Windows, but not on Linux)? I expect that NVidia won't answer this.

If you have the same problem as I did, you certainly won't get an RMA - your card works fine on Windows. There is no detectable issue with the card. And you are voiding your warranty by flashing it to that of a different vendor - but what other choice is there? Buy a second video card and cross your fingers?

Go to the site http://www.mvktech.net to find the right ROM and flashing utility. Of course, you shouldn't do this - but it was the only solution that worked for me. You very well might destroy your video card. Note: When flashing to a different vendor, you'll have to specify some flags to override the original vendor information.

One thing I found out from this whole debacle was that NVidia does not officially suggest or support any particular Motherboard/Video Card combination on Linux. So if you want to play it safe and buy a combination of hardware that just works - well, don't ask NVidia. If you're a home user like me and can't afford to drop $300 a pop on new video cards just because the one you bought has a non-detectable BIOS issue, well - good luck.

So as a last resort, you might want to try what I did and flash the your video card BIOS. But do a little research first and make sure your card is practically the same as the BIOS you're flashing to (I just made a wild-ass guess). If you flash it to a wrong BIOS, you're gonna end up with a nice decorative circuit board for your Christmas tree.

If anyone else out there had to do this, I'd appreciate hearing the details.

The oldest known nuclear fission reactor on Earth is about 1.5 billion years old and located in Gabon, Africa. Near a villiage called Oklo, a natural nuclear fission reactor was discovered in 1972 while mining uranium in the area. Wait a minute - who was building nuclear reactors that long ago? How is it possible to have such a technological marvel occur naturally? After all, doesn't a nuclear reactor take a high degree of technology and manpower to operate?

Apparently nature beat us to it. The French scientists that discovered the reactor found that some of the uranium had either been undergoing spontaneous, intense nuclear reactions - or apparently was much older than the rest of the planet (Terry Pratchett mentions this in his excellent book "The Science Of Discworld", a great read). Of course, the more plausible explanation is that the uranium underwent nuclear reactions naturally - not that it was dumped there by some ancient civilization that had atomic technology and then disappeared.

The Oklo reactor provided an important insight regarding one of the fundamental physical constants called the "fine structure constant". The Oklo reactor gave evidence that the fine structure constant has indeed been just that - a constant - at least for the last 2 billion years or so. Interesting, but why is this important?

Calculations on what occurred in the early universe assume that so-called fundamental constants haven't changed since then: the speed of light, the gravitational constant, the charge of an electron, etc. When what we believe now to be a constant can be shown to have changed over billions of years, then physics as we know it today must have been very, very different in the past.

In 1999 and 2001, two published papers (found here and here) indicated that in fact this particular constant has indeed changed : the behavior of atoms a long time ago was very different than what we observe today. The fine structure constant is, in fact, not constant - the universe that we live in now probably doesn't work the same as it used to.  Just one more piece of the puzzle in our quest of understanding how the universe works.

Recent reports confirm a theory that many had dismissed about the war on terror going on in Iraq. "Operation Honeypot", as it might be called if the State Department releases any more details on this most recently reported turn of events, has actually been an active and successful anti-terrorist operation aimed at containing as many terrorists as possible to one known and completely controllable location.

While many (if not most) people see the Bush/Republican war in Iraq as a dismal failure, it has obviously turned out some good things, such as Operation Honeypot (as well as giving civilians the freedom they didn't have under the tyranny of Saddam). The sheer genius of this operation is hallmark of the well thought out War in Iraq as well as most Middle East policies of the US. While most of the world wasn't looking, the Bush administration was able to set up a real-world honeypot in Iraq, drawing in thousands of unsuspecting terrorists for future monitoring/capture/intelligence gathering - like tens of thousands of Winnie-the-Poohs jumping to one gigantic pot of honey. As persons who are familiar with honeypots will tell you - there is no better way to see into the mind of your enemy than watching them when they think they're in their own environment and not being monitored. So what is a honeypot, anyway?

In computer terms, a honeypot is a trap set to detect and capture illegal activity on a network. It can be, for example, a computer set up on a network that appears to be part of a larger network, but is completely isolated. The attempts - perhaps successful - of a would-be hacker to compromise the computer give direct information into the mind of the hacker, his methods, and his goals in attacking the network.

The real genius occurred at the moment that the Bush administration took this honeypot idea from the IT sector and applied it to the overall strategy of the War in Iraq. Terrorists now have a place to breed ideas and train, build dirty bombs, plan world-wide attacks, and conduct terrorism over the internet - or so they think. In reality, Operation Honeypot has succeeded where others have failed, has strived where others stumbled: now even more terrorists are contained in a known, controllable area than ever before. And this is all thanks to the far-sightedness of the Bush administration. As president Bush said , "My judgment is, if we weren’t in Iraq, they’d find some other excuse, because they have ambitions". He's exactly right: people have ambitions. Why not corral these ambitious people into a small, secure location?

Certainly critics of the Bush administration will try to twist Operation Honeypot into something other than what it really is. While some will claim that the Iraq War has actually increased the number of terrorists in the world, they are missing the real point: these "closet terrorists", those that perhaps have thoughts of retaliation against the US for whatever reason but have been actively supressing those feelings, are being forced to "come out of the closet". In effect, the Bush administration has exposed the true thoughts deep down in the hearts of those sleeper terrorists, something that hours of expensive one-on-one therapy wouldn't unearth. By heightening the anger of these wannabe terrorists to new and before unseen levels, they transform from opinionated observers to active participants. And this is exactly what Operation Honeypot is there for - to attract all kinds of terrorists, especially the ones that are trying to hide it. And there are probably hundreds of thousands of them. If you've ever had a thought of anger against the US government, or a moment of weakness where you question the goings-on of the Bush regime: be careful - you could also be a target of Operation Honeypot. You don't actually have to go to Iraq, you just have to be there in spirit.

All this news of the Iraq War fueling terror is misguided. The Iraq War is just exposing more terrorists than ever before, and additionally containing many of them inside a country roughly the size of California. While Winnie the Pooh might balk at Bush's inclusion of his honey addiction as a strategy in Iraq, I for one think that someone should get awarded for creating Operation Honeypot. Or at least there should be a party. Perhaps with costumes.

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!