If Hitler offered a peace to Britain, could you provide a reference?
Not off the top of my head, but I do know that the Germans reached out to the British directly via the embassy in Switzerland and offered peace, which the British turned down.
Hitler had no interest in fighting the British, he simply wanted them to stop fighting with him, if they did so, he would have left them alone. If you read his book, you'll know that his target was always Russia, since long before he even took power.
Well, Russia and the Jews, but that is another issue...
The Soviet Union was forced into a war, took what it could get out of it, and then waged no further European wars, and only minor ones with anybody except China.
Kinda hard to wage further wars under the threat of nuclear attack.:)
I would say the union was toothless going into the strike if enough members were willing to take the extra $1000 znd forego the strike action.
Less than 20% of the members crossed the picket line, but enough did, and were willing to take the double time, along with contract pilots, to make it work.
When your base pay is $60K, then it doubles thanks to double time, plus an extra $1K per week, that is a whole pile of cash.
The company's position was, "there is nothing to negotiate, here is the job, take it or leave it".
So the OP was correct, unions only work if you can't replace the workers.
Sure, you can... But that misses the point... People don't, because they don't care, don't see the point, and frankly have 473 other things in life far more important to them.
Sure, you can do it, but the comment was "Android is free and open and popular", implying that consumers have chosen that. They haven't.
For all intents and purposes, Android might as well be as closed as Windows, from the average person's point of view.
Sure you will... show that you're now worth more money and have moved up the ladder...
I'm on the other side of the table, I've owned my own business for more than 20 years now, in one form or another. I've worked for other people from time to time, but my total lifetime spent employed by someone else has been less than 5 hours.
About 8 years ago, I had an office bookkeeper that I was paying $40k per year. She did some basic stuff around the office like cover the phones, handle basic HR stuff, and generally make sure the back end ran ok. Over the course of the year, she slowly took on more tasks to the point where she was basicly running the office day to day.
That is "office manager", not "bookkeeper". At her annual review, I gave her a $10,000 raise to $50k. She about fell out of her chair, she was shocked.
I simply said, "you now do a more demanding job, you could take those skills and get more money elsewhere, I would rather keep you, so I'm giving you a raise to what you're worth".
It really, really isn't that bloody complicated. Pay people what they are worth and they generally won't leave (unless outside life happens, and you can't control that).
For collective bargaining to be effective, the work delivered must be hard to replace.
^ This, people don't understand this...
I'm asked often why I don't still fly helicopters... the pay isn't that great, the working conditions aren't that great, and you're treated as highly replaceable.
And you are...
10 years ago I worked for PHI in the Gulf of Mexico, the union (yes, they are union pilots) ended up voting to strike over wages (and other things, it isn't always JUST wages)
The company offered employees a thousand bucks a week to cross the picket line (on top of their normal pay), plus since we were short pilots, there was a lot of workover that they paid at time and a half (and soon enough, raise to double time).
They also put all the managers to work and hired outside pilots to fly.
Between the extra pay, managers, and outside pilots, they kept operations going. The union kept up the strike for weeks, until finally the union went to the company and said, "ok, we're ready to come back to work".
The union has been toothless since. It cost PHI a crap load of money to break the union, but they did, and no one takes them seriously anymore.
I see no evidence that Hitler would have made an acceptable peace at any time before defeat. Hitler was willing to consider terms for a British surrender, but I doubt that would have held the Empire together. The surrender terms would probably have made Britain incapable of waging war later.
Then you have read a very different version of history than I have... and WWII is one of my better subjects...
Hitler offered a deal to the British, he didn't even ask for anything. All he wanted was for Britain to accept Hitler as ruler of mainland Europe, in return, he would stop fighting them and would respect all British Empire territories around the world.
Hitler didn't want to destroy the British Empire, he knew that if he did, America and Japan would be in a very good position to pickup the pieces, he for sure was not. Russia was his real target, he only invaded France for the same reason that the Kaiser did in 1914, for fear of a 2 front war. He needed to remove France as a threat before attacking Russia. Keep in mind, his terms to France were pretty reasonable. He wanted Northern France for security, but France could keep the South, and could keep their fleet and all overseas territories.
As far as I've been able to figure, Germany and Japan murdered people at close to twice the rate of the Soviet Union or China, and they were far more aggressive.
The Soviet Union killed far more people than Germany did. It is possible if you add up both Germany and Japan, their numbers are higher than the USSR, but Stalin was by far the most ruthless murderer in WWII.
Destroying Nazi Germany was necessary, and we could live with the Soviet Union.
That is what you've been taught for many years, that is how the history was written. Hitler wanted an alliance with the West, not war. He tried with Chamberlin, his goal was to keep the West out of the war so he could fight Russia. He didn't turn to invade France until after France had declared war on him, and even then not for almost a year.
Don't get me wrong, Hitler was evil, but don't think that we somehow couldn't have lived with him and destroyed the USSR. We for sure could have.
I try... the line between reason and snark on the Interwebs can be thin sometimes.:)
You do realize exactly who coined the Term? He wasn't American. He was Stalin. He was arguing _against_ the concept. He believed in Russian Exceptionalism.
Err... Not really, it predates him by 100 years or so...
That was my point- a Europe under German control, but without the bloodshed.
Sure, but the other nations signed up willingly, and can leave willingly.
Or they can win by having a better economy. No one is forcing Greece to stay in the Euro.
A Nuke, in International terms, is a reliable Nuclear Explosive, with a Delivery System. North Korea has had three Fizzles in a row, buried in Mountains. Enough said.
I don't know about you, but I don't think I'll get out of trouble with the government if I have a nuclear warhead and my excuse is, "well, I don't have a missile to deliver it, so I really don't have a nuke".
While their nukes didn't work as well as they had hoped, they still got a 5 kiloton explosion, give or take. That isn't a fizzle if you're standing even remotely close to it, that is a pretty darn big boom.
"...350 million people get to vote on the destiny of 7 billion..."
The irony to that is that the US Government doesn't really get into much with a whole lot of nations. When is the last time we got into Chile's business? Or how about something more remote, like Madagascar, Monaco, or Fiji?
The reality is that we don't really care what most of the people in the world are doing. If you have oil, or you threaten our interests, then we care.
I can't make it any more clear, if you don't understand it, then that really isn't my problem.
The version of Android installed on the vast majority of cell phones is anything BUT free and open... It might as well have nothing to do with generic Android.
Have you heard of Android? That shows how a free OS can gain a significant market share.
That is exactly what I mean, when geeks have these delusions of grandeur when it comes to free software...
Tell me, what percentage of Android phones are actually pure Android? How many people who own an Android phone have installed anything outside of the Google Play store?
If I buy a Samsung Galaxy phone, does it come with a simple, free and open OS, or does it come locked down and running a custom shell provided by Samsung with only Google Play as the easy source of programs?
In many respects, Windows on the desktop is FAR more free and open than Android is, at least the version of Android that most end consumers actually use.
Yes, yes, YOU can download an image and install a clean version on your phone, but people generally don't do that.
Not only did we deploy them, but we did so against predominantly non-military targets, killing 129,000 civilians or about 1/3 the population. Not included in this total is the untold suffering of hundreds of thousands who survived the initial bombing, but were maimed or otherwise wounded, usually, severely. Nor for the large increase in cancers and other health issues for those two cities that persist, even today.
While that is all sad, and I feel for them...
The United States is not at fault, the leadership of Imperial Japan is, for starting the war in the first place and for not surrendering when it was plainly obvious they had lost.
Under no reasonable estimate from would 2 million US lives been at risk if the bombs had not been dropped.
I never said 2 million US lives, I said 2 million lives... That includes Japanese, Russian, Chinese, and others who would have died. Keep in mind that Russia had just invaded, that would have continued and many more in Northern China would have died as well.
Many historians argue that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not about ending the war with Japan or protecting American lives.
Yes, many people love to play Monday Morning Quarterback... which is easy to do... on Monday Morning... Those historians weren't around then, weren't fighting then, and hadn't suffered through the war...
You have to view the events in the time they happened, which is a common mistake made by many people passing judgement over events that happened during another time in another place.
The irony is that the carpet bombing of Tokyo with napalm killed more people than the nuclear weapons did, yet no one complains about that.
It was simple to point outthe hypocrisy of being against N.Korea using nuclear weapons against their enemies when that is exactly what the US did sixty years earlier.
And that point is wrong. The reasons for the use of the weapons are different. Part of the problem comes from people in today's generation who don't want to call a spade what it is... a spade... Right and wrong, moral and immoral... The "everything is relative" concept will be the end of us if we don't buy a clue.
North Korea is an evil regime, the United States Government is not. We're not all sunny roses and not perfect, but if you put those two against each other, we're the clear and obvious superior nation. The very fact that I can have this conversation with you on a public forum is proof enough of that.
No. Not in this context. If Windows disappeared, then manufacturers would release drivers primarily for Linux, and applications would be written primarily for Linux.
No, they wouldn't... That is a nerd's wet dream, but it isn't going to happen.
Something else, probably OS X or something like it, would take Windows place.
For-profit companies generally don't want a "FREE" OS taking hold.
Poking North Korea annually with a stick hasn't worked.
No, because if you poke a bully with a stick he just punches you.
Force generally only works in the extreme, anything else has you looking like a fool.
Either use maximum force and hit them with everything you've got, or don't bother.
It is time for talk. Talking to them may go absolutely nowhere.
That has already been done, there have been talks, more talks, and lots more talks, for years and years...
The talking has indicated only one thing. At least one side doesn't want true peace. I can't say which side that really is, since I wasn't there, but if both sides wanted peace, there would be peace.
It takes one to tango, and two to stop. If one side doesn't want peace, they'll find a way to keep the tango going.
And yet, it is the United States, which is the only country which has actually used nuclear weapons to kill other people.
And your point?
So what, would you like to compare death counts among nations? I think you'll find the United States comes out rather well on that account, at least from 1900 onward.
Or perhaps you would prefer they had not been used and another 2 million had to die via conventional means for another 9 months? Would that be better?
Frankly, had nuclear weapons been used in Korea in 1950, perhaps the war would have been over quickly, there wouldn't be a separate South/North today, and millions of dead since that war would we alive today.
As Patton once said, you don't win a war by dying for your country, you win by making the other dumb sonofabitch die for his.
That's the problem with "American Exceptionalism".
The idea of it was routed in truth however... our ideas and our ideals are in fact superior to most others, at the time the term was coined.
We have gotten off track a bit since then, but there is some truth to it. The idea of freedom, liberty, "rights", and all that, is in fact exceptional, compared to what much of the world lives under.
Let's talk about the Brits. They had the World... and they let it go.
The irony is that Winston Churchill is seen as a great leader, one of the greatest PMs ever. Yet he led the British Empire to utter collapse and largely destroyed it.
He took on Germany, and won in the short term, but really lost in the long run. The British Empire was not prepared to fight Germany, and should have done a deal in 1940. Let Hitler and Stalin smash each other into pieces for awhile, build up your strength, get America into the war BEFORE you fight back, and so on.
It is quite possible that Hitler could have won against the USSR, had the British Empire done a deal in 1940. But it is also possible the British Empire would still exist in 2015, had they done so. The world would be a very different place. For all the evils of Hitler (and he had his share), Stalin was no better (worse in many regards), so leaving the USSR intact wasn't really any better than Nazi Germany.
Japan is _still_ pissed off about losing their last Big Territorial War.
I don't agree, but your statement is more opinion than fact, so fair enough, you can think that.
Japan got kicked hard enough to see that their path was wrong, that they would face extinction if they continued. Today they are an ally and peaceful nation. Good for them.
The same goes for Germany. What wasn't achieved by the Kaiser, or Hitler, by Military means, is now being done by Merkel. Greece is supposed to be an _Example_- don't screw with German Profits, or their utter control of the EU. _Their_ EU.
Nothing wrong with what Merkel is doing, she isn't sending armies anywhere or mass killing anyone.
Greece made their bed, now they are sleeping in it. They had the option to leave the Euro and choose not to take it.
(BTW, I don't believe that the Norks have Nukes, for reasons that I don't, or can't, go in to.)
Your belief is not required, they do, everyone agrees that they do, even the US Government doesn't deny it. You thinking they don't doesn't account for much.
The USSR won the war for Europe, but thanks all the same for the financing, lend-lease, etc.
They would not have done so, had the Western Governments signed a peace deal with Hitler.
Had the British Empire done a deal in 1940, removing the threat from the West, had Hitler not declared war against the US in 1941, then the USSR likely would have lost.
In the event, they came close, a few adjustments, some changes to minor details, and they could have lost as it was, Hitler got really close.
That all happened due to the British Empire being tired, broke, and open to change.
10 people who did exactly what Ghandi did in the several hundred years before, were all taken outside and shot.
In any case, it doesn't apply because the British Empire wasn't a despot, it wasn't disarmed, and it still exists today with the same chain of government.
If you accelerate at 1G for a little less than a year, you will be travelling pretty close to the speed of light. Add a year of deceleration plus the travel time and it should be physically feasible to travel a distance of 4 light years in between 5 and 7 years.
Sure, if relativity didn't get you first...
You can't just accelerate at 1G for a year. Well, you could, but you won't be going NEARLY as fast as you think you will, and it won't be even 20% of the speed of light.
While that may all be true, it is only useful to go to maybe a dozen stars, and then only a one way trip, and then only when devoting massive resources to the problem.
In other words, not going to happen.
We need something much better than chemical or nuclear rockets before we're going anywhere.
VTOL makes sense for electric drive aircraft. You can use multiple redundant cheap electric motors rather than one highly reliable super-mega-certified internal combustion engine.
The drive and power systems don't matter, they aren't the primary issue. (they are an issue, but lets pretend that is magically solved)
The real issue is that to lift a few thousand pounds off the ground requires a large volume of air to be moved. You cannot do this in a residential area, the downwash would be too damaging to everything around you. It doesn't matter if you use one large spinning rotor disc or a dozen ducted fans, you still have to propel a large volume of air at high speed, which hits the ground and moves out in all directions.
So you have to go to a big open space. Like an airport.
But HTOL requires big [costly] wings to get sufficient lift
Wings are cheap, the engine is the single most expensive thing in an airplane. If you switch to electric motors, you'll need redundancy so that if one of them fails, you remain airborne, but I'm sure that is solveable. That doesn't resolve the issue that going straight up is the least efficient way to go anywhere, the wings on an airplane actually do a very good job of turning fuel into lift.
And HTOL aircraft are easier to pilot by humans.
In forward flight, a helicopter is actually not that hard to fly, it handles much like an airplane once it has enough forward speed (I'm generalizing here, but with only 5 min of guidance, I can get almost anyone doing turns and maintaining altitude in a helicopter). Hovering is what is hard, but computers do that without effort. Most large advanced helicopters have a 4-axis autopilot that can auto-hover, that was solved a long time ago. It is worth noting that the autopilot in those helicopters costs as much as an entire light helicopter does. They are expensive.
HTOL makes sense for internal combustion engines because the engine is so heavy you don't want more than one of them if you can avoid it.
The Lycoming IO-360-L2A engine is actually not as heavy as you probably think it is. Sure, it is heavier than an electric motor would be, but then you need all those batteries. Sure, you don't need fuel, but 53 gallons of AVGAS has several orders of magnitude more energy than 318 pounds of batteries would. Even if you take 200 pounds of engine out, 500 pounds of batteries can't compete with the range of 52 gallons of AVGAS. Maybe someday that will happen, but not today.
As for multiple engines, yes you DO want multiple... I never really cared for flying in single engine aircraft, while they are very, very reliable, they can and do have problems. With two complete engines, you have a backup. I spent time flying in the gulf of Mexico in a single engine helicopter and was never really happy about it, but I needed the job, the flight time, and the experience, so there I was, 100 miles out to sea in a light, single engine helicopter with silly little popout floats that would have been rather useless in 5 foot seas...
Give me 2 engines any day of the week.
Side note: Interestingly enough, while 2 is better than 1, it turns out that 4 is not better than 2. In operational experience, the 747 fleet has had more occasions to turn off 1 of the 4 engines than most twin engine jets have had to turn off 1 of the 2 engines. The US Air Force did a study years ago and wanted to convert the B-52 fleet from the older engines with 8 to much newer high-bypass turbofans with just 4 engines, but the money wasn't in the budget. They would save fuel, maintenance, and actually make the plane more reliable, but it would cost lots of upfront money, so they didn't do it. Had they known they would still be flying them in 2015 (and probably 2025, maybe they would have figured out a way to do it)
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If Hitler offered a peace to Britain, could you provide a reference?
Not off the top of my head, but I do know that the Germans reached out to the British directly via the embassy in Switzerland and offered peace, which the British turned down.
Hitler had no interest in fighting the British, he simply wanted them to stop fighting with him, if they did so, he would have left them alone. If you read his book, you'll know that his target was always Russia, since long before he even took power.
Well, Russia and the Jews, but that is another issue...
The Soviet Union was forced into a war, took what it could get out of it, and then waged no further European wars, and only minor ones with anybody except China.
Kinda hard to wage further wars under the threat of nuclear attack. :)
I would say the union was toothless going into the strike if enough members were willing to take the extra $1000 znd forego the strike action.
Less than 20% of the members crossed the picket line, but enough did, and were willing to take the double time, along with contract pilots, to make it work.
When your base pay is $60K, then it doubles thanks to double time, plus an extra $1K per week, that is a whole pile of cash.
The company's position was, "there is nothing to negotiate, here is the job, take it or leave it".
So the OP was correct, unions only work if you can't replace the workers.
Sure, you can... But that misses the point... People don't, because they don't care, don't see the point, and frankly have 473 other things in life far more important to them.
Sure, you can do it, but the comment was "Android is free and open and popular", implying that consumers have chosen that. They haven't.
For all intents and purposes, Android might as well be as closed as Windows, from the average person's point of view.
Bloody lack of edit... 5 years, that should have said 5 years... :)
You won't ever get bigger raises than 2.5-3%
Sure you will... show that you're now worth more money and have moved up the ladder...
I'm on the other side of the table, I've owned my own business for more than 20 years now, in one form or another. I've worked for other people from time to time, but my total lifetime spent employed by someone else has been less than 5 hours.
About 8 years ago, I had an office bookkeeper that I was paying $40k per year. She did some basic stuff around the office like cover the phones, handle basic HR stuff, and generally make sure the back end ran ok. Over the course of the year, she slowly took on more tasks to the point where she was basicly running the office day to day.
That is "office manager", not "bookkeeper". At her annual review, I gave her a $10,000 raise to $50k. She about fell out of her chair, she was shocked.
I simply said, "you now do a more demanding job, you could take those skills and get more money elsewhere, I would rather keep you, so I'm giving you a raise to what you're worth".
It really, really isn't that bloody complicated. Pay people what they are worth and they generally won't leave (unless outside life happens, and you can't control that).
For collective bargaining to be effective, the work delivered must be hard to replace.
^ This, people don't understand this...
I'm asked often why I don't still fly helicopters... the pay isn't that great, the working conditions aren't that great, and you're treated as highly replaceable.
And you are...
10 years ago I worked for PHI in the Gulf of Mexico, the union (yes, they are union pilots) ended up voting to strike over wages (and other things, it isn't always JUST wages)
The company offered employees a thousand bucks a week to cross the picket line (on top of their normal pay), plus since we were short pilots, there was a lot of workover that they paid at time and a half (and soon enough, raise to double time).
They also put all the managers to work and hired outside pilots to fly.
Between the extra pay, managers, and outside pilots, they kept operations going. The union kept up the strike for weeks, until finally the union went to the company and said, "ok, we're ready to come back to work".
The union has been toothless since. It cost PHI a crap load of money to break the union, but they did, and no one takes them seriously anymore.
Too easy to replace.
I see no evidence that Hitler would have made an acceptable peace at any time before defeat. Hitler was willing to consider terms for a British surrender, but I doubt that would have held the Empire together. The surrender terms would probably have made Britain incapable of waging war later.
Then you have read a very different version of history than I have... and WWII is one of my better subjects...
Hitler offered a deal to the British, he didn't even ask for anything. All he wanted was for Britain to accept Hitler as ruler of mainland Europe, in return, he would stop fighting them and would respect all British Empire territories around the world.
Hitler didn't want to destroy the British Empire, he knew that if he did, America and Japan would be in a very good position to pickup the pieces, he for sure was not. Russia was his real target, he only invaded France for the same reason that the Kaiser did in 1914, for fear of a 2 front war. He needed to remove France as a threat before attacking Russia. Keep in mind, his terms to France were pretty reasonable. He wanted Northern France for security, but France could keep the South, and could keep their fleet and all overseas territories.
As far as I've been able to figure, Germany and Japan murdered people at close to twice the rate of the Soviet Union or China, and they were far more aggressive.
The Soviet Union killed far more people than Germany did. It is possible if you add up both Germany and Japan, their numbers are higher than the USSR, but Stalin was by far the most ruthless murderer in WWII.
Destroying Nazi Germany was necessary, and we could live with the Soviet Union.
That is what you've been taught for many years, that is how the history was written. Hitler wanted an alliance with the West, not war. He tried with Chamberlin, his goal was to keep the West out of the war so he could fight Russia. He didn't turn to invade France until after France had declared war on him, and even then not for almost a year.
Don't get me wrong, Hitler was evil, but don't think that we somehow couldn't have lived with him and destroyed the USSR. We for sure could have.
Thank you for your reasoned response.
I try... the line between reason and snark on the Interwebs can be thin sometimes. :)
You do realize exactly who coined the Term? He wasn't American. He was Stalin. He was arguing _against_ the concept. He believed in Russian Exceptionalism.
Err... Not really, it predates him by 100 years or so...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
That was my point- a Europe under German control, but without the bloodshed.
Sure, but the other nations signed up willingly, and can leave willingly.
Or they can win by having a better economy. No one is forcing Greece to stay in the Euro.
A Nuke, in International terms, is a reliable Nuclear Explosive, with a Delivery System. North Korea has had three Fizzles in a row, buried in Mountains. Enough said.
I don't know about you, but I don't think I'll get out of trouble with the government if I have a nuclear warhead and my excuse is, "well, I don't have a missile to deliver it, so I really don't have a nuke".
While their nukes didn't work as well as they had hoped, they still got a 5 kiloton explosion, give or take. That isn't a fizzle if you're standing even remotely close to it, that is a pretty darn big boom.
"...350 million people get to vote on the destiny of 7 billion..."
The irony to that is that the US Government doesn't really get into much with a whole lot of nations. When is the last time we got into Chile's business? Or how about something more remote, like Madagascar, Monaco, or Fiji?
The reality is that we don't really care what most of the people in the world are doing. If you have oil, or you threaten our interests, then we care.
I can't make it any more clear, if you don't understand it, then that really isn't my problem.
The version of Android installed on the vast majority of cell phones is anything BUT free and open... It might as well have nothing to do with generic Android.
Have you heard of Android? That shows how a free OS can gain a significant market share.
That is exactly what I mean, when geeks have these delusions of grandeur when it comes to free software...
Tell me, what percentage of Android phones are actually pure Android? How many people who own an Android phone have installed anything outside of the Google Play store?
If I buy a Samsung Galaxy phone, does it come with a simple, free and open OS, or does it come locked down and running a custom shell provided by Samsung with only Google Play as the easy source of programs?
In many respects, Windows on the desktop is FAR more free and open than Android is, at least the version of Android that most end consumers actually use.
Yes, yes, YOU can download an image and install a clean version on your phone, but people generally don't do that.
That is an interesting point of view...
"a few small Windows holdouts", like a billion desktops...
The consumer end of computers isn't going to Linux, no one cares what OS runs their TV or appliance.
Geeks who have these delusions of grandeur of Linux taking over are kidding themselves.
Not only did we deploy them, but we did so against predominantly non-military targets, killing 129,000 civilians or about 1/3 the population. Not included in this total is the untold suffering of hundreds of thousands who survived the initial bombing, but were maimed or otherwise wounded, usually, severely. Nor for the large increase in cancers and other health issues for those two cities that persist, even today.
While that is all sad, and I feel for them...
The United States is not at fault, the leadership of Imperial Japan is, for starting the war in the first place and for not surrendering when it was plainly obvious they had lost.
Under no reasonable estimate from would 2 million US lives been at risk if the bombs had not been dropped.
I never said 2 million US lives, I said 2 million lives... That includes Japanese, Russian, Chinese, and others who would have died. Keep in mind that Russia had just invaded, that would have continued and many more in Northern China would have died as well.
Many historians argue that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not about ending the war with Japan or protecting American lives.
Yes, many people love to play Monday Morning Quarterback... which is easy to do... on Monday Morning... Those historians weren't around then, weren't fighting then, and hadn't suffered through the war...
You have to view the events in the time they happened, which is a common mistake made by many people passing judgement over events that happened during another time in another place.
The irony is that the carpet bombing of Tokyo with napalm killed more people than the nuclear weapons did, yet no one complains about that.
It was simple to point outthe hypocrisy of being against N.Korea using nuclear weapons against their enemies when that is exactly what the US did sixty years earlier.
And that point is wrong. The reasons for the use of the weapons are different. Part of the problem comes from people in today's generation who don't want to call a spade what it is... a spade... Right and wrong, moral and immoral... The "everything is relative" concept will be the end of us if we don't buy a clue.
North Korea is an evil regime, the United States Government is not. We're not all sunny roses and not perfect, but if you put those two against each other, we're the clear and obvious superior nation. The very fact that I can have this conversation with you on a public forum is proof enough of that.
No. Not in this context. If Windows disappeared, then manufacturers would release drivers primarily for Linux, and applications would be written primarily for Linux.
No, they wouldn't... That is a nerd's wet dream, but it isn't going to happen.
Something else, probably OS X or something like it, would take Windows place.
For-profit companies generally don't want a "FREE" OS taking hold.
Then you got hosed.
You really think so?
I paid like $500 each for 2 27" pro series Dells a few years ago.
I paid $750 for my 32" Acer 4k IPS monitors, you think that is expensive?
27" QHD displays are running around half that these days, closer to $200 for 1080p screens, but bleh 1080p...
The professional 30" 1600p displays are still near $1K, but they are really good factory calibrated monitors.
Correction: It is a SMALL high end gaming screen... the screen itself is not why it is expensive...
All fair points...
Poking North Korea annually with a stick hasn't worked.
No, because if you poke a bully with a stick he just punches you.
Force generally only works in the extreme, anything else has you looking like a fool.
Either use maximum force and hit them with everything you've got, or don't bother.
It is time for talk. Talking to them may go absolutely nowhere.
That has already been done, there have been talks, more talks, and lots more talks, for years and years...
The talking has indicated only one thing. At least one side doesn't want true peace. I can't say which side that really is, since I wasn't there, but if both sides wanted peace, there would be peace.
It takes one to tango, and two to stop. If one side doesn't want peace, they'll find a way to keep the tango going.
And yet, it is the United States, which is the only country which has actually used nuclear weapons to kill other people.
And your point?
So what, would you like to compare death counts among nations? I think you'll find the United States comes out rather well on that account, at least from 1900 onward.
Or perhaps you would prefer they had not been used and another 2 million had to die via conventional means for another 9 months? Would that be better?
Frankly, had nuclear weapons been used in Korea in 1950, perhaps the war would have been over quickly, there wouldn't be a separate South/North today, and millions of dead since that war would we alive today.
As Patton once said, you don't win a war by dying for your country, you win by making the other dumb sonofabitch die for his.
That's the problem with "American Exceptionalism".
The idea of it was routed in truth however... our ideas and our ideals are in fact superior to most others, at the time the term was coined.
We have gotten off track a bit since then, but there is some truth to it. The idea of freedom, liberty, "rights", and all that, is in fact exceptional, compared to what much of the world lives under.
Let's talk about the Brits. They had the World... and they let it go.
The irony is that Winston Churchill is seen as a great leader, one of the greatest PMs ever. Yet he led the British Empire to utter collapse and largely destroyed it.
He took on Germany, and won in the short term, but really lost in the long run. The British Empire was not prepared to fight Germany, and should have done a deal in 1940. Let Hitler and Stalin smash each other into pieces for awhile, build up your strength, get America into the war BEFORE you fight back, and so on.
It is quite possible that Hitler could have won against the USSR, had the British Empire done a deal in 1940. But it is also possible the British Empire would still exist in 2015, had they done so. The world would be a very different place. For all the evils of Hitler (and he had his share), Stalin was no better (worse in many regards), so leaving the USSR intact wasn't really any better than Nazi Germany.
Japan is _still_ pissed off about losing their last Big Territorial War.
I don't agree, but your statement is more opinion than fact, so fair enough, you can think that.
Japan got kicked hard enough to see that their path was wrong, that they would face extinction if they continued. Today they are an ally and peaceful nation. Good for them.
The same goes for Germany. What wasn't achieved by the Kaiser, or Hitler, by Military means, is now being done by Merkel. Greece is supposed to be an _Example_- don't screw with German Profits, or their utter control of the EU. _Their_ EU.
Nothing wrong with what Merkel is doing, she isn't sending armies anywhere or mass killing anyone.
Greece made their bed, now they are sleeping in it. They had the option to leave the Euro and choose not to take it.
(BTW, I don't believe that the Norks have Nukes, for reasons that I don't, or can't, go in to.)
Your belief is not required, they do, everyone agrees that they do, even the US Government doesn't deny it. You thinking they don't doesn't account for much.
The USSR won the war for Europe, but thanks all the same for the financing, lend-lease, etc.
They would not have done so, had the Western Governments signed a peace deal with Hitler.
Had the British Empire done a deal in 1940, removing the threat from the West, had Hitler not declared war against the US in 1941, then the USSR likely would have lost.
In the event, they came close, a few adjustments, some changes to minor details, and they could have lost as it was, Hitler got really close.
Does Ghandi and company count?
No, it does not.
That all happened due to the British Empire being tired, broke, and open to change.
10 people who did exactly what Ghandi did in the several hundred years before, were all taken outside and shot.
In any case, it doesn't apply because the British Empire wasn't a despot, it wasn't disarmed, and it still exists today with the same chain of government.
If you accelerate at 1G for a little less than a year, you will be travelling pretty close to the speed of light. Add a year of deceleration plus the travel time and it should be physically feasible to travel a distance of 4 light years in between 5 and 7 years.
Sure, if relativity didn't get you first...
You can't just accelerate at 1G for a year. Well, you could, but you won't be going NEARLY as fast as you think you will, and it won't be even 20% of the speed of light.
It doesn't work the way you think it does.
While that may all be true, it is only useful to go to maybe a dozen stars, and then only a one way trip, and then only when devoting massive resources to the problem.
In other words, not going to happen.
We need something much better than chemical or nuclear rockets before we're going anywhere.
"hydrofluoric acid" is for wimps, take off, nuke the whole place from orbit... only way to be sure...
VTOL makes sense for electric drive aircraft. You can use multiple redundant cheap electric motors rather than one highly reliable super-mega-certified internal combustion engine.
The drive and power systems don't matter, they aren't the primary issue. (they are an issue, but lets pretend that is magically solved)
The real issue is that to lift a few thousand pounds off the ground requires a large volume of air to be moved. You cannot do this in a residential area, the downwash would be too damaging to everything around you. It doesn't matter if you use one large spinning rotor disc or a dozen ducted fans, you still have to propel a large volume of air at high speed, which hits the ground and moves out in all directions.
So you have to go to a big open space. Like an airport.
But HTOL requires big [costly] wings to get sufficient lift
Wings are cheap, the engine is the single most expensive thing in an airplane. If you switch to electric motors, you'll need redundancy so that if one of them fails, you remain airborne, but I'm sure that is solveable. That doesn't resolve the issue that going straight up is the least efficient way to go anywhere, the wings on an airplane actually do a very good job of turning fuel into lift.
And HTOL aircraft are easier to pilot by humans.
In forward flight, a helicopter is actually not that hard to fly, it handles much like an airplane once it has enough forward speed (I'm generalizing here, but with only 5 min of guidance, I can get almost anyone doing turns and maintaining altitude in a helicopter). Hovering is what is hard, but computers do that without effort. Most large advanced helicopters have a 4-axis autopilot that can auto-hover, that was solved a long time ago. It is worth noting that the autopilot in those helicopters costs as much as an entire light helicopter does. They are expensive.
HTOL makes sense for internal combustion engines because the engine is so heavy you don't want more than one of them if you can avoid it.
The Lycoming IO-360-L2A engine is actually not as heavy as you probably think it is. Sure, it is heavier than an electric motor would be, but then you need all those batteries. Sure, you don't need fuel, but 53 gallons of AVGAS has several orders of magnitude more energy than 318 pounds of batteries would. Even if you take 200 pounds of engine out, 500 pounds of batteries can't compete with the range of 52 gallons of AVGAS. Maybe someday that will happen, but not today.
As for multiple engines, yes you DO want multiple... I never really cared for flying in single engine aircraft, while they are very, very reliable, they can and do have problems. With two complete engines, you have a backup. I spent time flying in the gulf of Mexico in a single engine helicopter and was never really happy about it, but I needed the job, the flight time, and the experience, so there I was, 100 miles out to sea in a light, single engine helicopter with silly little popout floats that would have been rather useless in 5 foot seas...
Give me 2 engines any day of the week.
Side note: Interestingly enough, while 2 is better than 1, it turns out that 4 is not better than 2. In operational experience, the 747 fleet has had more occasions to turn off 1 of the 4 engines than most twin engine jets have had to turn off 1 of the 2 engines. The US Air Force did a study years ago and wanted to convert the B-52 fleet from the older engines with 8 to much newer high-bypass turbofans with just 4 engines, but the money wasn't in the budget. They would save fuel, maintenance, and actually make the plane more reliable, but it would cost lots of upfront money, so they didn't do it. Had they known they would still be flying them in 2015 (and probably 2025, maybe they would have figured out a way to do it)