Israel claims that their new Iron Dome anti-missile defense shield has shot down a rocket fired by Hamas from the Gaza Strip.  This is pretty significant.  Israel has committed to better protecting its citizens from Palestinian rocket attacks, which have killed scores of Israelis in the past decade.  These attacks, primarily using locally made 17mm Qassam rockets supplemented with imported 122mm Grad rockets, are aimed at terrorizing the Israeli citizenry.  These weapons have no guidance other than the “If you point it up at x degrees of elevation at the launcher, it will probably hit x kilometers away” school of fire direction.

Basically, a few time-delayed single-shot rocket launchers are set up in a Palestinian settlement, and “aimed” at an Israeli city.  The terrorists leave, the rockets fire after a preset time, and the rockets fly in the general direction of Israel, with no real guidance system other than “over yonder”.  If Israel retaliates by hitting the location of the launchers, all they will normally hit is a Palestinian home, with the attendant CNN shot of wounded or dead Palestinian children that have been placed for the cameras.  Remember, when an American or Israeli rocket or bomb hits the wrong house and hurts someone, we’re evil imperialists.  When Hamas launches a couple dozen unguided rockets into an Israeli neighborhood, they’re freedom fighters.

The Iron Dome system appears to be roughly analogous to the American Patriot system, although the Tamir missile is designed to be used against artillery rockets instead of the Patriot’s anti-air and anti-ballistic missile roles.  There is a radar subsystem, a command and control subsystem, and a missile interceptor.   Its sophistication will probably allow it to discriminate between incoming rounds that are going to impact in a field and those that are going to actually hit a subdivision.  On launch, the Tamir interceptor closes with the target and destroys it.

One issue with the system appears to be cost.  Each interceptor costs as much as $50,000, and requires a modern factory to manufacture.  A Qassam rocket costs a few hundred dollars to make, and can be slapped together in any Gaza machine shop using scrap metal and a few pounds of smuggled explosives.  That’s quite a premium that Israel is willing to pay in order to knock cheap rockets out of the sky.

Another issue may be how the system handles an environment saturated with targets.  Obviously it can handle the normal attack with a few rockets, but how will it perform when Hamas changes tactics and starts launching a couple hundred small, inexpensive rockets at once?  Will the command and control system be able to pick out the targets that are most likely to impact in an Israeli neighborhood in order to conserve a finite number of interceptors?

Also, this is a purpose built system.  If Hamas learns that rockets are no longer effective, will they switch over to mortars or even just setting up a couple worn out heavy machine guns and spraying a few thousand rounds of plain old bullets into the sky in the general direction of Haifa?  I hope that Israel is well into development of their next set of technology and tactics to deal with Hamas’s indiscriminate attacks against Israeli civilians.

Congratulations to Israel in demonstrating that they can provide protection to their citizens against the cowardly rocket attacks from Hamas.  I hope that their system scales well enough that they can continue to provide that protection once Hamas changes tactics and tries to saturate Israeli defenses.

• ACORN pleads guilty to voter fraud in Nevada.  Maximum fine – $5000
• A close friend of President Obama got caught trying to pay an undercover officer to schlobben his knobben.  Want to bet this one gets swept under the rug?
• An air traffic controller in Knoxville apparently took a deliberate 5 hour nap while on-duty.   He’ll probably be fired, but hey, he’s most likely in a  union.  He’ll be back on the government payroll in some other capacity as fast as you can say “grievance”.
• CAIR got caught with their hands in the Libyan cookie jar.  

No, this isn’t a gun post.  But I feel almost as strongly on this subject as I do about my guns.

Borepatch threw a hand grenade into the hen house in his recent post about how the Command Line Interface (CLI) on computers was going the way of the dodo in favor of Graphical User Interfaces (GUI).  For you people who work in the real world, Microsoft Windows is a GUI.  You see a menu or a set of buttons, you select what you want the computer to do with the mouse or some other pointy-clicky device, and the computer does what the program tells it to do.  When you open the C: prompt, now called the Command Prompt, on your Windows computer, that is a CLI.

 I can see his point from the end user perspective.  Although in my day job, we still use a lot of CLI type applications on *nix, mainframe, and even some Micro$oft systems, even if they’re encapsulated within a Windows interface.  But on the whole, most non-tech people who use computers will almost never open a command line unless they’re on the phone with tech support.  So, Borepatch’s assertion is correct for most consumers.

However, for those of us who work with computers, as opposed to those who use computers to do their jobs, the CLI is our bread and butter. Even the Windows guys I work with eventually migrate from GUI-only perspectives to using the command shells on their systems for at least some of their work.

GUI’s, even for some admin work, are great for beginners who are following a script to accomplish a set of discreet tasks or to do something that should be simple but isn’t if done the old fashioned way.  I’ve been known to use a GUI to set up printer queues and such on my systems from time to time simply because the CLI way of doing it is arcane and easily messed up.  But using a GUI exclusively can give someone a false sense of security when it comes to working on a system.  Yes, you can set up almost anything on a Windows system and a  lot of things on a *nix box with graphical interfaces, but you may not know what to do when the GUI doesn’t do what you tell it to do.  Troubleshooting through a GUI, if it’s even written into the application, can be ugly.  If you have access to C:, #, or $ (Cthulhu forbid SYS$SYSTEM) you can quickly look through logs, enter diagnostic commands, and try different solutions that may or may not have been included in a GUI.  Knowing what goes on behind the buttons comes from doing these tasks on the CLI, and being able to troubleshoot when things go wrong is crucial.

And for those of us who take care of more than a couple systems, using the CLI to remotely administer them makes life a heck of a lot easier and more efficient.  It takes a heck of a lot less bandwidth to send CLI commands to a system at the end of a 56k modem line (don’t laugh, I do it all the time) than it would be to get GUI commands and output from a remote graphical service down the same pipe.  Even Microsoft appears to be remembering that not everyone has fat pipes to all of their systems, and has built a remote, secure CLI into Windows Server 2008.

Maybe I’m just showing my age here, but it will be a cold day in Cuba before I stop using CLI on my systems, and something tells me that CLI in some form will be used on computers long after I hang up my SSH keys.

You’ve got about 18 months until the next presidential election, and I’m not impressed with your efforts so far.  Others say it better than I can, but let me put this into a familiar theme to help you understand my current opinion of the choices you seem to be putting forward:

Drill Sergeant DaddyBear:  Well, well, Private RNC.  Show me your war face!
Private RNC:  Sir!
Drill Sergeant DaddyBear:  Your war face!  Like this:  REAGAN!  Now show me your war face for 2012!
Private RNC:  Huckabee!
Drill Sergeant DaddyBear:  Are you kidding me!?  Sound off like you got a pair!
Private RNC:  uhhhh… ROMNEY!
Drill Sergeant DaddyBear:  Try again!
Private RNC:  PALIN!
Drill Sergeant DaddyBear:  Better, but not good enough!
Private RNC:  TRUMP!
Drill Sergeant DaddyBear:  Getting colder, braindead!
Private RNC:   GIIINNNNGGGRRRIIIICCCCHHHH!!
Drill Sergeant DaddyBear:  IS THAT THE BEST YOU CAN DO YOU SPINELESS EXCUSE FOR A POLITICAL PARTY!??? THE BEST PART OF YOU IS SITTING AT THE BOTTOM OF GOLDWATER’S FOOT LOCKER!  YOU DON’T DESERVE TO ROLL AROUND IN RONALD REAGAN’S SPITTLE!  YOU DON’T IMPRESS ME, WORK ON IT!

Now that you know how I really feel, let me make a prediction:  You are probably going to nominate some milksop because “it’s his turn”, the TEA Party movement is going to turn on you (remember them?  They’re the reason Boehner holds the gavel and Mitch McConnell negotiates from a position of power with Dingy Harry), and Obama is going to get four more years to thoroughly roger our republic.

It’s been 20 years since you nominated someone I actually respect.Pull your head out of your 4th point of contact, nominate a charismatic conservative, and make me want to keep my affiliation with your party.  I’m tired of voting for the lesser of two evils.  

A wheelchair bound grandfather on Martha’s Vineyard is being charged with assault after laying a beating on the sorry individual that his granddaughter told him was molesting her.  While I don’t condone vigilantism, there’s no way the prosecutor would want me on this jury.  Apparently he warned the alleged scumbag not to stand up or he’d Carlton Fisk him.  When said alleged scumbag stood up, he swung for the fences.  The alleged asshat was also arrested in relation to assaulting another child.

Hopefully the charges against Mr. Hebert will be dropped.  I also hope that the alleged despicable, child  molesting, Louisville Slugger indented forehead having waste of protoplasm spends the rest of of his short miserable life being routinely beaten by prison guards.

Yes, I’m not very forgiving when it comes to people who hurt children.  Why do you ask?

A Mexican woman has tattooed almost 100% of her body, implanted fangs in her mouth, and implanted “horns” on the top of her head.  I’m not against people doing with their bodies as they want, but this just doesn’t look good to me:

No offense, but if I see that coming down a dark street towards me, I’m going to either run like my ass was on fire or go all Owen Pitt on her.  Now y’all excuse me while I do some shopping for holy water, silver bullets, and oak stakes.

Most of you know what a berzerker is: a Viking warrior who gets into a frenzy during battle, fighting with no armor and light armament, with only his fury and the favor of Odin to protect him.

Apparently, while other aspects of Scandinavian culture have softened in the past millenium or so, the animals in Sweden continue this fine tradition.

Zoo wardens in eastern Sweden said 10 flamingoes were killed when an anteater got loose at a zoo and broke into their compound.

 Apparently the wayward anteater went into a defensive frenzy when it was startled by the reaction of the flamingos to it being in their enclosure.  This anteater, normally a plain and peaceful animal, went Bruce Lee on the more flamboyant and flashy flamingoes when he was provoked.  Whether the anteater had taken hallucinogenic drugs or just got high on adrenaline prior to this episode is not being reported.  

Could it be that the animals at the zoos in Sweden are the continuation of great Viking traditions?  Are we going to see bands of sea-going marmosets sacking British seaside towns?  Will a colony of badgers set themselves up in Ireland before being assimilated into the general population?  Will zebras be used as bodyguards for the crown heads of Europe? 

Of course, when attacked by roving bands of bears, the French will surrender and give up between 1/3 and 1/2 of their territory, but that’s to be expected.

Since I’ve been home from work I’ve done laundry and dishes, helped make dinner, played with BooBoo, put together the crockpot full of chili (with beans) for tomorrow’s dinner, and laid out clothes for Boo to wear tomorrow.

I’m not really a liberated man.  I’m actually quite the Neanderthal in many ways.  But Irish Woman works just as many hours as I do, and if I do everything in my power to make her happy and relaxed, then I will have an opportunity to be happy and relaxed.

I’ve watched the rioting and murders in Afghanistan over the weekend with a sense of finality.

We’ve spent our time, blood, and treasure in Dar Al Islam for the entire breadth of my life.  We’ve tried to broker peace deals between mostly democratic Israel and the countries around it, with most of them not being worth the paper they were printed on.  We’ve propped up more than a few dictators who took our money and used it to build militaries to fight us and support those who would strike us in our homes.  We’ve overthrown despotic, barbaric regimes in two countries in exchange for a decade of watching our sons and daughters come home in coffins.  We’ve tried to accomodate a backwards code of conduct that would make Attilla the Hun proud.  Now, supposedly because some fundamentalist Christian jerk-off in Florida decided to gain a little of the attention that mommy and daddy denied him by burning a Koran, innocent people who went to Afghanistan to provide support and help to the Afghani people have been murdered in the streets.

Why have we not only taken these attacks, but apologized for being a big target?  One word:  Tribute.

We are paying tribute in blood, treasure, and recognition to the Islamic world because we are afraid that they will shut off the oil.  Just as the Barbary Pirates demanded payment in exchange for passage in the Mediterranean, the denizens of the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia are squeezing us for everything we’ll pay.  “Millions for defense, not a cent in tribute!” was the slogan of our country in 1800.  We need to rediscover our backbone and tell the barbarians of Dar Al Islam to get bent.

All support for Islamic countries and movements needs to end, military, political, or economic.  If the house of Al Saud or the princes of the Persian Gulf cannot fend for themselves, then they don’t deserve to be in power.  The denizens of Iraq and Afghanistan will never stop living on their knees, so we need to stop trying to force them to stand up.  We need to stop buying oil from the Persian Gulf, North Africa, and Central Asia, and make up the difference with increased energy efficiency, additional domestic energy production, and exploiting our trade relationships with friendly countries in our own hemisphere.  Nationals of Islamic countries that have supported our enemies need to be shown the door and sent home.  If a citizen of the United States provides aid and comfort  to one of these barbaric regimes in any way, they need to be prosecuted as agents of an unfriendly foreign power.

Contact with non-democratic regimes in the Islamic area of the world should be cut down to an absolute minimum.  Containment along the lines of the Truman Doctrine should be our goal.   Defense pacts with countries that express democracy as their goal and actually make progress towards modernization and liberalization should be made so that the refugees from the 12th century don’t destroy those who want to join civilization.  However, we should make it clear that we will not prop up every two-bit generalissimo who spouts the right platitudes while lining his own pockets and killing his people.  We should make it clear to Iran, Syria, and the rest of the Islamic world that any attack against us or our allies will be answered with immediate and overwhelming force.   We’re a peaceful people, but if you raise a hand to us, we will take off your arm.

I am sick and tired of watching those who want to help the Islamic world get kicked in the teeth just prior to being beheaded.  We need to isolate these barbarians from our civilization and wait for them to rot from the inside as we did with the Soviet Union.  No amount of our blood, toil, or treasure is going to reverse 1000 years of barbarism, and we should stop trying to fill the bottomless pit that is the Dar Al Islam.