'Note: "scared of its people" is not meant as in the "they've got bombs" sense, but in the "they'll vote us out or protest" sense.'
I'd like to point out that Jefferson did mean it in the "they've got bombs" sense. Well, guns anyway. That's what he meant when he wrote that
"The strongest reason for the People to retain the Right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government".
Of course you should start with the ballot, and exhaust all possible peaceful means first. But Jefferson made perfectly clear that there always needs to be the underlying threat of force "as a last resort". Otherwise those in power can just ignore the citizens, the laws, and even the constitution. That's one reason why he was dead set against allowing any government to have a standing army - it might cancel out or overcome the threat of force implicit in the citizens' right to bear arms.
"Its called altruism - try it out some time, it really washes the taste of cynicism out of your mouth".
That's really my point. Altruism, if carried to the point of dying for the freedom of others, leaves you unable to taste anything - cynicism included.
If you read my original post carefully, you would notice that I did not say there was anything wrong with dying for the liberty of others. Nor did I say I was opposed to the idea. All I did was to point out that, in dying, you give up *everything*. You will not be able to enjoy freedom, or the satisfaction of knowing you have done good to others, or the satisfaction of seeing them enjoy their liberty. What's more, I think it very unlikely that you will derive any satisfaction while you are dying either. You will be too busy feeling agony and desperation - and, very probably, regret.
None of this means I would necessarily refuse to die in such a way myself. I really don't know if I would have enough courage - and that is true of most of us. It's better to confront reality honestly than to swagger and boast about your readiness to do one of the hardest things known to man.
"When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty". - Thomas Jefferson
But then, if Jefferson were alive today he would already be in Guantanamo. Just check out some of the other things he said.
"The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first".
"...were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter".
"I hope we shall... crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country".
"The strongest reason for the People to retain the Right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government".
"A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine".
"Experience demands that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the general prey of the rich on the poor".
"Conquest is not in our principles. It is inconsistent with our government".
"Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny".
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent".
And, perhaps most relevant of all today:
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free...it expects what never was and never will be".
But those are just (some of) the attributes of a bad executive of any sort. The only thing that makes CIOs special is that they are probably the only executives that most slashdotters ever have dealings with.
You are quite right to qualify that statement. Good luck if you want to:
1. Suggest that there is any difference between men and women, or boys and girls. 2. Suggest that there is any average difference between groups of human beings. 3. Mention Israel in any way (unless you are Jewish). 4. Discuss the topic of political correctness. 5. "Mention The War". 6. Criticize any organ of government in any way. 7. Etc., etc., etc.
I always laugh heartily when people talk about "the Victorians and their taboos". We have far more taboos than they ever did, and much more vicious sanctions against those who break them.
It's a simple syllogism, really. (And yes, pedants of the world, I do know that it's not a formally correct syllogism).
1. I want to take pictures of my car (and publish them if I feel like it). 2. Ford objects to my doing that if my car is a Ford. 3. Therefore, I should make sure that my car is not a Ford.
'The UK ministry of defense was experimenting with a way to dampen the sound in helicopters and developed a honeycombed material that did the opposite -- conducted sound.'
Looks like another small step for felonious government... how is it proposed to pay for the electricity taken?
People used to be prosecuted for "theft of electricity" back in the bad old days before legislators passed clueless, wrong-headed laws about "breaking into computers". (Of course, that was nonsense, as the computers of the day used just as much electricity when they were idle as when they were doing useful calculations).
So why do government agencies set themselves up as above the law in this way?
Others have taken apart most of this statement. I would like to point out that Wikipedia differs from "my blog" in that it is regularly read by millions of people, and it has a policy of telling the objective truth.
Your blog, on the contrary, is likely to have a readership many orders of magnitude smaller than Wikipedia's, and would normally be assumed by most readers to have the agenda of promoting your ideas.
"If I was Microsoft, I would design a new OS from the ground up..."
Big mistake! That's precisely what Microsoft and its engineers have never been able to do properly. First they had DOS (which, as you'll recall, they "got" from someone else by whatever means). Then they had Windows, based on ideas picked up from a visit to Apple (which in turn got them from Xerox PARC, but that's another story). Neither DOS nor Windows 1-2-3 was really much good as an operating system, either in terms of functionality or stability. (And don't even think about security - that wasn't on the requirements list at all).
Then came the big turning point, when Gates had the wit to hire Dave Cutler and his crew from DEC, whose management was doing such a great job of driving it under the waves despite having the most powerful engines on the high seas. Ironic, really - DEC had great hardware and software coupled with lousy management, and Microsoft had great management coupled with lousy software. Naturally DEC didn't have the wit to hire some Microsoft managers, because its own managers were too dumb to think of that.
Everything you like about Windows since the mid-1990s is directly attributable to Cutler and his team. They laid down a steel skeleton for the "Black Pearl" that was Windows 3, while (regrettably) keeping the same user interface more or less intact. The result was a series of OS - NT, 2K, and XP - all of which (once debugged) are solid clients and pretty reliable servers too. To this day much of the internals of Windows bears a striking resemblance to the internals of VMS, right down to the names of data structures.
The trouble with Vista was precisely that Microsoft tried to get clever and creative. The further they get from the original NT steel skeleton, the more lost they are. (Don't even get me started on WinFS, which they never even managed to deliver).
Hmmmm. That would be true, if we could safely assume the gadget is aimed at genuine enemy targets only. In practice, there are two main reasons for collateral damage.
1. Bombs tend to fall up to several miles away from the intended target. 2. The intended target is, in fact, the wrong one.
In the second category we have celebrated incidents such as the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, which was hit fair and square just as intended. In that sense, there was no collateral damage. Unfortunately, some halfwits had screwed up and the intended target was not what it was thought to be.
We also have the many "safe houses" in which Saddam Hussein was reported to be hiding in the early days of the current war in Iraq. Night after night, we were told that the US armed forces had dropped their bombs with surgical precision on the exact house where the accursed dictator was known to be skulking. As we now know, however, Saddam escaped every single one of those "precision strikes", and was found live and kicking long after.
So who *was* in those not-very-safe-houses? Innocent civilians, that's who.
Which is why there will continue to be "collateral damage". Only now the innocent civilians will be burned or vaporised instead of being burned or blasted.
TANSTAAFL. It's ironic that people running, e.g. ClimatePrediction are simultaneously helping to change the climate. Each PC does not generate much heat, but several million of them certainly do - especially if left on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week as many enthusiasts tend to. See for example this rough analysis: http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1240015
We have to figure both the heat generated and the power consumed (much of which is derived from fossil fuels). Even if you use green electricity, that just means that other people have to use fossil fuels. Good for your conscience, but not for the world as a whole.
On the other hand, as several people have pointed out, the waste heat from PCs does contribute to space heating - thus perhaps reducing the amount of energy spent to keep houses, etc. warm in winter.
Re:OB In Soviet Russia
on
Flying Humans
·
· Score: 1
There used to be a saying in the Red Army:
"If you don't know how, we'll show you. If you don't want to, we'll make you".
"I don't agree with this sort of treatment, but what should we do with them now?"
The same thing we in decent free nations, under the rule of law, do for anyone who has been wronged. Free them, and punish those who wrongfully imprisoned them. Right up to the very top of the tree - the place where the buck stops (although the present incumbent doesn't think so).
Today I heard something truly hilarious on a BBC news broadcast. The reader described the US intelligence report that says Iran stopped trying to develop nuclear weapons years ago, then reflected: "This runs contrary to the received wisdom in Washington".
"Britain, France, and the USA waited as long as they could before engaging Hitler".
You see, you're doing it again. Britain and France waited until Hitler invaded a country whose integrity they had guaranteed. They had hoped he wouldn't, and they weren't at all happy about the prospects, but nevertheless they put their money where their mouths were. It didn't even do Poland any good, because it was on the far side of Germany - and was being attacked from the other side by the USSR at the same time anyway. But they went to war because they felt they couldn't let Germany run riot without doing anything about it.
The USA, on the other hand, didn't fight until Japan and Germany actually declared war on it - at which point it had no alternative at all. The salient difference is that Britain and France declared war on Germany because it attacked Poland - whereas the USA was clearly never going to go to war to help anyone else, waiting until it was attacked itself.
Incidentally, the main reason Britain and France had to appease Hitler was that they had disarmed. And guess who was the main advocate of universal disarmament after WW1? Woodrow Wilson!
"A Roman legion could (and did) kill hundreds of thousands of people in a matter of hours using spears and short swords".
That turns out not to be the case. A Roman legion ran about 4000 - 5500 soldiers (about the size of a modern brigade). A good-sized army consisted of a number of legions. Very few battles in the Roman era involved armies bigger than 40,000 - 50,000 on either side. Ironically enough, you can read in Wikipedia's entry about the battle of Cannae that "Ernlee Bradford, a biographer of Hannibal, claims that the 50,000 Romans killed represent the largest number of troops felled in battle in a single day". However the Romans also lost some 80,000 soldiers (not including servants and camp followers) killed at the battle of Arausio.
Turning to battles the Romans actually won, the most people they killed in one day seems to be 80,000 Britons in the battle of Watling Street. But that may include women, children, and even pack animals! 40,000 Gauls were killed at the battle of Telamon, and most other Roman battles resulted in smaller enemy butcher's bills.
I find it amusing, though silly, that the outcome might very likely be something like this (in financial terms):
Poster's company buys a license: cost (say) $1,000. Code author earns $1,000 (subject to tax), but has to draw up a suitable license and get involved in all sorts of other legal stuff. Both parties have to hire lawyers to advise them, draw up legal documents, etc. Lawyers bill, say, 20 hours at $500/hour. Total cost of lawyers: $10,000.
Sorry this is OT, but I can't let the parent stand unchallenged.
AC has put heavy spin on his personal choice of facts. The way he puts it, you might suppose that the USA joined the war after 1.5 years (5.5 - 4). Actually, the USA commenced hostilities 2 years, 4 months, and one week after the outbreak of WW2 in the West. VE Day was 7th May 1945. VJ Day was 15th August 1945. So the European war lasted 5 years and 8 months (68 months), and the Pacific war lasted 3 years and 8 months (44 months). The USA entered both wars in December 1941 when first Japan, then Germany declared war on it. (In other words, it did not enter the war until it was actually attacked by the dictatorships - how's that for appeasement?)
So the USA fought for 40 of the 69 months in Europe (59%) and, of course, for all of the 44 months in the Pacific (100%).
To set the "appeasement" idea to rest: Britain and France had fought for the whole 4 years of WW1, suffering 994,000 and 1,698,000 dead respectively - plus far more wounded, and many civilian casualties. Much of northern France had been turned into a desert. The USA fought for the last 18 months of the war, and suffered 117,000 deaths - less than 5% of the combined British and French figure. Yet that experience was enough to turn American politics isolationist for the next 22 years!
It was quite natural, and much to their credit, that the British, French, and many others tried to make WW1 "the war to end wars". They disarmed, set up the League of Nations, and did their best to resolve disputes in a civilised way. Unfortunately, the scars of WW1 - which, by the way, killed over 4 million and wounded nearly 8 million in Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire - combined with Hitler's unique demagogy, set Germany on a path for war. While Britain and France did appease the Axis powers, they declared war immediately Germany invaded Poland. Whereas the USA, which had previously done absolutely nothing, went on doing absolutely nothing while France and the rest of Europe were conquered, and Britain and the USSR came within a hairsbreadth of going under.
So please don't preach about "appeasement" any more. It's interesting that the USA avoided fighting Hitler - a very dangerous enemy - as long as it possibly could, but rushed to attack Saddam Hussein, whom it knew it could defeat easily.
Actually the US armed forces are the most efficient bunch of people in history when it comes to killing other people quickly and en masse.
Their only shortcoming is that they aren't very discriminating about exactly whom they kill. Just as long as US casualties stay low - grotesquely low in terms of the history of armed conflict, although of course any casualties on your own side seem too many. That's a political necessity, when the commander in chief is also the elected president of a democratic state.
Traditionally, war has been "the continuation of diplomacy by other means" (as Carl von Clausewitz neatly observed). That meant exerting pressure on specific people whom you wanted to influence, and - if necessary - killing them and their supporters.
The USA has always been adept at the form of diplomacy that involves choosing partners iin foreign nations who are likely to further US interests, and supporting them by all manner of means. Unfortunately the subtlety of this approach breaks down when "continued" by the modern American way of war, which is basically to break into a territory and kill everyone in sight very quickly. That tends to be counterproductive, because it eventually pisses everyone off. As soon as "Shock and Awe" was mentioned, it was immediately obvious that it was essentially just 21st century Blitzkrieg. And despite all the rubbish about "precision targetting", it is about as selective as Blitzkrieg - in other words, not at all. Everyone within the blast radius dies. And the blast is not necessarily centred on the chosen target, and the chosen target is not necessarily what it is thought to be. Remember the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, or the 30-40 publicly announced bombings of "safe houses" where Saddam Hussein was allegedly hiding in 2003? All those bombs hit and destroyed their targets - although we later learned that Saddam was not in any of them. Want to guess who was?
Minimizing your own casualties, desirable as it is in terms of domestic politics, turns out to be disastrous in terms of foreign politics. War cannot be a continuation of diplomacy if it lacks subtlety and discrimination. Moreover, in the long run it will be disastrous domestically too - when even the US media can no longer suppress the truth about the real damage done to Iraq and its people.
True in theory. The facts of the matter are these:
1. The UK parliament consists of two houses: Commons and Lords. By constitutional convention, the Lords cannot block legislation agreed by the Commons; they can only delay it for a while and urge them to think it through.
2. Because the British constitution does not separate the legislature from the executive branch, the Prime Minister is the leader of the party with a majority in the Commons. That means that the Commons becomes a rubber stamp for whatever laws the PM wishes to pass. So the law to punish irresponsible data loss was passed by Parliament - true. But it was initiated by Gordon Brown, the PM, and his pals in the Cabinet; and once they decided they wanted it, nobody could stop it.
3. HMR&C is a government department mostly run by career civil servants. But it reports in to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the government minister responsible for finance, who is the senior member of the Cabinet after the PM. Gordon Brown, the current PM, was Chancellor for the past ten years.
4. So, if you follow the threads of power and responsibility - yes, the loss of data is directly traceable to the same people who passed the law. But they have set up an impressive array of cut-outs and facades to give them every opportunity for "credible deniability".
Slashdot Mirror
'Note: "scared of its people" is not meant as in the "they've got bombs" sense, but in the "they'll vote us out or protest" sense.'
I'd like to point out that Jefferson did mean it in the "they've got bombs" sense. Well, guns anyway. That's what he meant when he wrote that
"The strongest reason for the People to retain the Right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government".
Of course you should start with the ballot, and exhaust all possible peaceful means first. But Jefferson made perfectly clear that there always needs to be the underlying threat of force "as a last resort". Otherwise those in power can just ignore the citizens, the laws, and even the constitution. That's one reason why he was dead set against allowing any government to have a standing army - it might cancel out or overcome the threat of force implicit in the citizens' right to bear arms.
"Its called altruism - try it out some time, it really washes the taste of cynicism out of your mouth".
That's really my point. Altruism, if carried to the point of dying for the freedom of others, leaves you unable to taste anything - cynicism included.
If you read my original post carefully, you would notice that I did not say there was anything wrong with dying for the liberty of others. Nor did I say I was opposed to the idea. All I did was to point out that, in dying, you give up *everything*. You will not be able to enjoy freedom, or the satisfaction of knowing you have done good to others, or the satisfaction of seeing them enjoy their liberty. What's more, I think it very unlikely that you will derive any satisfaction while you are dying either. You will be too busy feeling agony and desperation - and, very probably, regret.
None of this means I would necessarily refuse to die in such a way myself. I really don't know if I would have enough courage - and that is true of most of us. It's better to confront reality honestly than to swagger and boast about your readiness to do one of the hardest things known to man.
Five paragraphs of personal abuse, without one single reasoned argument.
I really hit a nerve there.
Freedom has always been worth *other people* dying for.
Think it through. If you're dead, are you free? More to the point, do you care? Not much.
To no one's surprise, it was Jefferson.
"When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty".
- Thomas Jefferson
But then, if Jefferson were alive today he would already be in Guantanamo. Just check out some of the other things he said.
"The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first".
"...were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter".
"I hope we shall... crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country".
"The strongest reason for the People to retain the Right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government".
"A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine".
"Experience demands that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the general prey of the rich on the poor".
"Conquest is not in our principles. It is inconsistent with our government".
"Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny".
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent".
And, perhaps most relevant of all today:
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free...it expects what never was and never will be".
But those are just (some of) the attributes of a bad executive of any sort. The only thing that makes CIOs special is that they are probably the only executives that most slashdotters ever have dealings with.
"...people can (sort of) speak freely there..."
You are quite right to qualify that statement. Good luck if you want to:
1. Suggest that there is any difference between men and women, or boys and girls.
2. Suggest that there is any average difference between groups of human beings.
3. Mention Israel in any way (unless you are Jewish).
4. Discuss the topic of political correctness.
5. "Mention The War".
6. Criticize any organ of government in any way.
7. Etc., etc., etc.
I always laugh heartily when people talk about "the Victorians and their taboos". We have far more taboos than they ever did, and much more vicious sanctions against those who break them.
"In the UK the Advertising Standards Authority governs advertising and, amongst other things, insists that it not be misleading."
But what's the point of advertising if it isn't misleading? That's exactly what it's for - to mislead people.
It's a simple syllogism, really. (And yes, pedants of the world, I do know that it's not a formally correct syllogism).
1. I want to take pictures of my car (and publish them if I feel like it).
2. Ford objects to my doing that if my car is a Ford.
3. Therefore, I should make sure that my car is not a Ford.
Way to whip up sales, people!
'The UK ministry of defense was experimenting with a way to dampen the sound in helicopters and developed a honeycombed material that did the opposite -- conducted sound.'
Looks like another small step for felonious government... how is it proposed to pay for the electricity taken?
People used to be prosecuted for "theft of electricity" back in the bad old days before legislators passed clueless, wrong-headed laws about "breaking into computers". (Of course, that was nonsense, as the computers of the day used just as much electricity when they were idle as when they were doing useful calculations).
So why do government agencies set themselves up as above the law in this way?
Others have taken apart most of this statement. I would like to point out that Wikipedia differs from "my blog" in that it is regularly read by millions of people, and it has a policy of telling the objective truth.
Your blog, on the contrary, is likely to have a readership many orders of magnitude smaller than Wikipedia's, and would normally be assumed by most readers to have the agenda of promoting your ideas.
"If I was Microsoft, I would design a new OS from the ground up..."
Big mistake! That's precisely what Microsoft and its engineers have never been able to do properly. First they had DOS (which, as you'll recall, they "got" from someone else by whatever means). Then they had Windows, based on ideas picked up from a visit to Apple (which in turn got them from Xerox PARC, but that's another story). Neither DOS nor Windows 1-2-3 was really much good as an operating system, either in terms of functionality or stability. (And don't even think about security - that wasn't on the requirements list at all).
Then came the big turning point, when Gates had the wit to hire Dave Cutler and his crew from DEC, whose management was doing such a great job of driving it under the waves despite having the most powerful engines on the high seas. Ironic, really - DEC had great hardware and software coupled with lousy management, and Microsoft had great management coupled with lousy software. Naturally DEC didn't have the wit to hire some Microsoft managers, because its own managers were too dumb to think of that.
Everything you like about Windows since the mid-1990s is directly attributable to Cutler and his team. They laid down a steel skeleton for the "Black Pearl" that was Windows 3, while (regrettably) keeping the same user interface more or less intact. The result was a series of OS - NT, 2K, and XP - all of which (once debugged) are solid clients and pretty reliable servers too. To this day much of the internals of Windows bears a striking resemblance to the internals of VMS, right down to the names of data structures.
The trouble with Vista was precisely that Microsoft tried to get clever and creative. The further they get from the original NT steel skeleton, the more lost they are. (Don't even get me started on WinFS, which they never even managed to deliver).
Hmmmm. That would be true, if we could safely assume the gadget is aimed at genuine enemy targets only. In practice, there are two main reasons for collateral damage.
1. Bombs tend to fall up to several miles away from the intended target.
2. The intended target is, in fact, the wrong one.
In the second category we have celebrated incidents such as the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, which was hit fair and square just as intended. In that sense, there was no collateral damage. Unfortunately, some halfwits had screwed up and the intended target was not what it was thought to be.
We also have the many "safe houses" in which Saddam Hussein was reported to be hiding in the early days of the current war in Iraq. Night after night, we were told that the US armed forces had dropped their bombs with surgical precision on the exact house where the accursed dictator was known to be skulking. As we now know, however, Saddam escaped every single one of those "precision strikes", and was found live and kicking long after.
So who *was* in those not-very-safe-houses? Innocent civilians, that's who.
Which is why there will continue to be "collateral damage". Only now the innocent civilians will be burned or vaporised instead of being burned or blasted.
TANSTAAFL. It's ironic that people running, e.g. ClimatePrediction are simultaneously helping to change the climate. Each PC does not generate much heat, but several million of them certainly do - especially if left on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week as many enthusiasts tend to. See for example this rough analysis: http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1240015
We have to figure both the heat generated and the power consumed (much of which is derived from fossil fuels). Even if you use green electricity, that just means that other people have to use fossil fuels. Good for your conscience, but not for the world as a whole.
On the other hand, as several people have pointed out, the waste heat from PCs does contribute to space heating - thus perhaps reducing the amount of energy spent to keep houses, etc. warm in winter.
There used to be a saying in the Red Army:
"If you don't know how, we'll show you. If you don't want to, we'll make you".
"I don't agree with this sort of treatment, but what should we do with them now?"
The same thing we in decent free nations, under the rule of law, do for anyone who has been wronged. Free them, and punish those who wrongfully imprisoned them. Right up to the very top of the tree - the place where the buck stops (although the present incumbent doesn't think so).
Today I heard something truly hilarious on a BBC news broadcast. The reader described the US intelligence report that says Iran stopped trying to develop nuclear weapons years ago, then reflected: "This runs contrary to the received wisdom in Washington".
The received *what*?
"Britain, France, and the USA waited as long as they could before engaging Hitler".
You see, you're doing it again. Britain and France waited until Hitler invaded a country whose integrity they had guaranteed. They had hoped he wouldn't, and they weren't at all happy about the prospects, but nevertheless they put their money where their mouths were. It didn't even do Poland any good, because it was on the far side of Germany - and was being attacked from the other side by the USSR at the same time anyway. But they went to war because they felt they couldn't let Germany run riot without doing anything about it.
The USA, on the other hand, didn't fight until Japan and Germany actually declared war on it - at which point it had no alternative at all. The salient difference is that Britain and France declared war on Germany because it attacked Poland - whereas the USA was clearly never going to go to war to help anyone else, waiting until it was attacked itself.
Incidentally, the main reason Britain and France had to appease Hitler was that they had disarmed. And guess who was the main advocate of universal disarmament after WW1? Woodrow Wilson!
"A Roman legion could (and did) kill hundreds of thousands of people in a matter of hours using spears and short swords".
That turns out not to be the case. A Roman legion ran about 4000 - 5500 soldiers (about the size of a modern brigade). A good-sized army consisted of a number of legions. Very few battles in the Roman era involved armies bigger than 40,000 - 50,000 on either side. Ironically enough, you can read in Wikipedia's entry about the battle of Cannae that "Ernlee Bradford, a biographer of Hannibal, claims that the 50,000 Romans killed represent the largest number of troops felled in battle in a single day". However the Romans also lost some 80,000 soldiers (not including servants and camp followers) killed at the battle of Arausio.
Turning to battles the Romans actually won, the most people they killed in one day seems to be 80,000 Britons in the battle of Watling Street. But that may include women, children, and even pack animals! 40,000 Gauls were killed at the battle of Telamon, and most other Roman battles resulted in smaller enemy butcher's bills.
I like it, I like it!! Mod parent up to 5 "funny", please!
I find it amusing, though silly, that the outcome might very likely be something like this (in financial terms):
Poster's company buys a license: cost (say) $1,000.
Code author earns $1,000 (subject to tax), but has to draw up a suitable license and get involved in all sorts of other legal stuff.
Both parties have to hire lawyers to advise them, draw up legal documents, etc. Lawyers bill, say, 20 hours at $500/hour. Total cost of lawyers: $10,000.
Hmmmm.
"Actually, the USA commenced hostilities 2 years, 4 months, and one week after the outbreak of WW2 in the West".
Arithmetic has always been too hard for me. That should be "2 years, 3 months, and one week" (give or take). Sorry, guys!
Sorry this is OT, but I can't let the parent stand unchallenged.
AC has put heavy spin on his personal choice of facts. The way he puts it, you might suppose that the USA joined the war after 1.5 years (5.5 - 4). Actually, the USA commenced hostilities 2 years, 4 months, and one week after the outbreak of WW2 in the West. VE Day was 7th May 1945. VJ Day was 15th August 1945. So the European war lasted 5 years and 8 months (68 months), and the Pacific war lasted 3 years and 8 months (44 months). The USA entered both wars in December 1941 when first Japan, then Germany declared war on it. (In other words, it did not enter the war until it was actually attacked by the dictatorships - how's that for appeasement?)
So the USA fought for 40 of the 69 months in Europe (59%) and, of course, for all of the 44 months in the Pacific (100%).
To set the "appeasement" idea to rest: Britain and France had fought for the whole 4 years of WW1, suffering 994,000 and 1,698,000 dead respectively - plus far more wounded, and many civilian casualties. Much of northern France had been turned into a desert. The USA fought for the last 18 months of the war, and suffered 117,000 deaths - less than 5% of the combined British and French figure. Yet that experience was enough to turn American politics isolationist for the next 22 years!
It was quite natural, and much to their credit, that the British, French, and many others tried to make WW1 "the war to end wars". They disarmed, set up the League of Nations, and did their best to resolve disputes in a civilised way. Unfortunately, the scars of WW1 - which, by the way, killed over 4 million and wounded nearly 8 million in Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire - combined with Hitler's unique demagogy, set Germany on a path for war. While Britain and France did appease the Axis powers, they declared war immediately Germany invaded Poland. Whereas the USA, which had previously done absolutely nothing, went on doing absolutely nothing while France and the rest of Europe were conquered, and Britain and the USSR came within a hairsbreadth of going under.
So please don't preach about "appeasement" any more. It's interesting that the USA avoided fighting Hitler - a very dangerous enemy - as long as it possibly could, but rushed to attack Saddam Hussein, whom it knew it could defeat easily.
Actually the US armed forces are the most efficient bunch of people in history when it comes to killing other people quickly and en masse.
Their only shortcoming is that they aren't very discriminating about exactly whom they kill. Just as long as US casualties stay low - grotesquely low in terms of the history of armed conflict, although of course any casualties on your own side seem too many. That's a political necessity, when the commander in chief is also the elected president of a democratic state.
Traditionally, war has been "the continuation of diplomacy by other means" (as Carl von Clausewitz neatly observed). That meant exerting pressure on specific people whom you wanted to influence, and - if necessary - killing them and their supporters.
The USA has always been adept at the form of diplomacy that involves choosing partners iin foreign nations who are likely to further US interests, and supporting them by all manner of means. Unfortunately the subtlety of this approach breaks down when "continued" by the modern American way of war, which is basically to break into a territory and kill everyone in sight very quickly. That tends to be counterproductive, because it eventually pisses everyone off. As soon as "Shock and Awe" was mentioned, it was immediately obvious that it was essentially just 21st century Blitzkrieg. And despite all the rubbish about "precision targetting", it is about as selective as Blitzkrieg - in other words, not at all. Everyone within the blast radius dies. And the blast is not necessarily centred on the chosen target, and the chosen target is not necessarily what it is thought to be. Remember the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, or the 30-40 publicly announced bombings of "safe houses" where Saddam Hussein was allegedly hiding in 2003? All those bombs hit and destroyed their targets - although we later learned that Saddam was not in any of them. Want to guess who was?
Minimizing your own casualties, desirable as it is in terms of domestic politics, turns out to be disastrous in terms of foreign politics. War cannot be a continuation of diplomacy if it lacks subtlety and discrimination. Moreover, in the long run it will be disastrous domestically too - when even the US media can no longer suppress the truth about the real damage done to Iraq and its people.
"No, that would be Parliament".
True in theory. The facts of the matter are these:
1. The UK parliament consists of two houses: Commons and Lords. By constitutional convention, the Lords cannot block legislation agreed by the Commons; they can only delay it for a while and urge them to think it through.
2. Because the British constitution does not separate the legislature from the executive branch, the Prime Minister is the leader of the party with a majority in the Commons. That means that the Commons becomes a rubber stamp for whatever laws the PM wishes to pass. So the law to punish irresponsible data loss was passed by Parliament - true. But it was initiated by Gordon Brown, the PM, and his pals in the Cabinet; and once they decided they wanted it, nobody could stop it.
3. HMR&C is a government department mostly run by career civil servants. But it reports in to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the government minister responsible for finance, who is the senior member of the Cabinet after the PM. Gordon Brown, the current PM, was Chancellor for the past ten years.
4. So, if you follow the threads of power and responsibility - yes, the loss of data is directly traceable to the same people who passed the law. But they have set up an impressive array of cut-outs and facades to give them every opportunity for "credible deniability".