I happen to believe that dying is the ultimate sacrifice. Don't you agree? Which would you rather lose, your life or a fraction of your fortune? Until mid-1944, the U.S. risked only its money in Europe.
By the ultimate measure, the Russians sacrificed more than all the other Allies combined. They also destroyed more of the Wehrmacht than all the other Allies combined. There is no doubt that they won in Europe -- the most important theatre by far -- not the U.S. In Europe, the only major U.S. accomplishment has been the undeserved grabbing of credit for winning.
I have provided facts and figures. You have offered only loud and obnoxious assertions that were later proven false. Just like a neocon. Go away.
And we got better. Now we have fish farms, catch limits, etc. A short-term setback doesn't invalidate the concept of continual improvement; if anything it reinforces it.
We got better because when one civilization fell, there were others around to pick up the slack. SirSlud was saying that if our current global civilization crashed, we would all crash. There is no way to tell whether the human race would ever recover, because a global crash has never happened before. It is extremely unwise to do nothing to prepare.
Also, the opportunity cost of waiting to sell (until copper really is scarce) might be greater than the increase in revenue.
Also, the mining companies need cash flow. They could hoard their copper for decades in the expectation of increased prices, but that does them little good if they go bankrupt in the meantime due to lack of cash.
Well, now that I have taught you some history, you are being more sensible. Here is what you said originally, which was what prompted my first response:
We lost 250,000 soldiers liberating Europe's pathetic "#$. Go tell a real D-Day survivor that we just hung back and let the Reds do the dirty-work. I quadruple-dog dare you.
To which the Europeans and the Russians could reply, "We were winning the war anyway without your tardy help. Please stop implying that you were anything but a minor factor in WW2." They probably should have said so in 1945, but they were too busy burying their dead and clearing away the smoking rubble. These days, they don't say it much because the younger generation probably do not care, except when an American is being obnoxious.
By the way, I have uttered no insults. I will refer you to the words of one of your greatest presidents, Harry S. Truman: "I never give them hell; I just tell them the truth and they think it is hell!"
You may prefer to ignore the truth and stay in the neocons' comfortable fantasy cuckoo land, but remember what I said about the durability of democracy when the voters are deluded.
Go figure I always thought we entered WWII because of Pearl Harbor.
I meant the war in Europe and should have been that specfic. In any case, the Pacific theatre was minor compared to the European one.
Now I want you to go find one of the families of one of those 250,000 men and women, and call their grandparent "chicken feed". Do you have the courage of your convictions?
Then even one wartime casualty would be a tragedy by your reckoning. And so it is. But there are different levels of horror. A quarter of a million American deaths in WW2 is indeed chicken feed compared to the 17 million dead Russians, or the 60 million in total for that war. The U.S. population and infrastructure were not devastated, unlike most of the other participants.
The U.S. was not totally a slacker in that war. But they got off incredibly lightly compared to the Russians, whose casualties were greater than the total of all the other Allies combined. And as I shall demonstrate, the Russians were going to win the European war regardless of American help. So the typical American chest-beating about being the major force behind victory is totally unearned and undeserved, and really grating to anyone who knows the truth.
Or are you going to hide here in the obscurity of/.?
Ah, a personal insult, the mark of the loser in debate. I am not the one hiding behind a pseudonym here.
Also, stopping an advance is a long way from winning. Without the two-front invasion, Germany and USSR probably would have called it a draw.
No way would it have been a draw. By the end of the war, the Russians were producing tanks, cannons, and airplanes in incredible numbers (look up Magnitogorsk sometime). By the beginning of 1944, six months before the D-Day that Americans like to brag about so loudly, the Russians were rolling back the Germans on all fronts. The Nazis were short of everything by then, even energy; they had to synthesize their own fuel ("ersatz") at ruinous cost, which only hastened their demise. No, by no means would the war have been a stalemate if the U.S. had stayed out. The Russians would have won; there is absolutely no doubt about it.
The real reason behind D-Day, as I said, was to prevent the Soviet Union from overrunning all of continental Europe. It is unsurprising that you are ignorant of this fact; you have been fed lies from birth. And the U.S. government has continued to lie to its people, especially lately, before, during, and after the invasion of Iraq. You may not care whether Iraqis suffer, but remember one thing: a democracy cannot survive if the voters are ignorant of the truth.
We lost 250,000 soldiers liberating Europe's pathetic "#$. Go tell a real D-Day survivor that we just hung back and let the Reds do the dirty-work. I quadruple-dog dare you.
Yep, hanging back was exactly what the USA did in World War II. You say there were 250,000 American casualties in the war? The Russians lost 17 million people; the U.S.'s mere quarter million is chicken feed in comparison.
In fact, it has been argued that the U.S. stayed out of WW II until it became obvious, a year and a half after the destruction of much of the Wehrmacht in the Battle of Stalingrad, that the Soviet Union was about to win. And then the U.S. finally invaded Normandy on June 6, 1944 -- to stop the Soviets from taking over Europe, not to defeat the already stumbling Nazis.
Pro-Nazi sentiment was actually pretty strong in the U.S. in those days, believe it or not. IBM was a noted collaborator. So was George W. Bush's grandfather, Prescott Bush, who was convicted for helping to finance Hitler's rise to power.
So American triumphalism about WW II really grates on those of us who know the truth.
the grandparent's point was that auto
fatalities dwarf Iraqi war casualties, yet are seldom mentioned.
So? Old age is 100% fatal, shouldn't that deserve a screaming headline every day? Of course not. A large number of auto fatalities a year is the unavoidable price we pay for allowing fallible humans to be drivers. And as I said, a few fatalities (due to mechanical failure, etc.) are unavoidable even if the drivers were perfect automatons. Anything that is routine and completely unavoidable, such as old age and auto accidents, is not news.
In contrast, the second invasion of Iraq was eminently avoidable, so avoidable in fact that Bush, Cheney, and the Neocons used the grossest deceit to con the American public into it. And that is why the American deaths in Iraq are so much more important than auto fatalities: because democracy will fail unless the people in the highest reaches of government are held accountable for their utterly dishonest manipulations in matters of life and death.
Bush, Cheney, and the Neocons should fear the vengeance of the American people, because it is coming. It is coming no matter how desperately the neocons try to distract the people with side issues such as auto accidents.
They call it an unusually bloody day in Iraq when we lose around half a dozen or so or more of our own. So what do we call what goes on every single day here, genocide?
Many auto fatalities are essentially Acts of God (mechanical failure, slick road surfaces, deer crossings). Practically all such fatalities are unintentional, which is why we call them accidents.
In contrast, all American deaths in Iraq are the result of a deliberate, grossly dishonest Act of Bush.
The only good thing about this case is that it's likely to push Microsoft and their lobbying fund away from the software patents are good camp.
No, Microsoft loves the idea of software patents -- it's the only defense they have against open source (in the long run).
I think Microsoft is fighting Eolas for two reasons. First, if they lost, Eolas could demand a continuing royalty from MS, which would amount to admitting a legal encumbrance on Windows. MS would hate that.
And second, MS is perhaps hoping to bankrupt Eolas by litigation, then take over the patent and use it as a huge hammer against open source.
C-14 dating has been calibrated many times against samples where we can directly count off the years, such as tree growth rings, annual lake sediment layers, cultural artifacts for which we have documented historical dates, pollen layers, ice cores, oceanic sediments, etc. etc. If the C-14 method were to agree with only one of these other techniques, we could ascribe the agreement to coincidence. But if all of these techniques independently agree with the C-14 dating and with each other, the "coincidence" explanation becomes about as likely as a flat earth.
The evidence vouching for the accuracy of C-14 dating is immense. You may as well dispute the evidence for quantum mechanics, even though the computer on which you write to express your disagreement would not function without the quantum mechanical aspects of semiconductors.
The scientific method has produced amazing things like lasers and computers, neither of which would work without quantum mechanics. Do you suppose that this same scientific method might be equally excellent at discerning the true history of the Earth?
What truly frightens the publishers, I think, is the potential for Google to put them entirely out of business. If you can find any book you want through Google, then the next logical step is to buy the books directly from Google. The major publishers clearly see their potential obsolescence and will fight it with every dirty trick at their disposal.
It's the same for Apple and the record companies. It's too late to kill Apple and iTunes, but if the record companies recover control over the online prices of their songs, they will maintain their power over the music industry.
He doesn't need a proposal to limit the damage that oligarchs can do, because the proper laws are already in the books. They just need to be enforced.
For example, the anti-trust laws are pretty much a dead letter today.... and, to the surprise of no one who knows even a smidgeon of history, we are presently repeating the horrific corruption of the Gilded Age. A one-time learner is young and naive, as the U.S. was during the first age of the robber barons; a two-time learner is just plain stupid.
There's no evidence that Europeans had made it any further than Greenland.
See L'Anse aux Meadows, the remains of an 11th century Viking settlement in Newfoundland, Canada. Lots of Norse technology found there, including a Viking-style forge.
As far as the extensions comment goes, more than likely Massachusetts would just let it slide. Someone with enough power to make it an issue would have to care, and personally I'm surprised this has gone as far as it has. Personally, by not "embracing and extending" the standard, Microsoft is making a big mistake, IMO. Basic human nature and a little political play would have let them succeed. I wouldn't be surprised if this is their next tactic.
It wouldn't slide if total compatibility with OpenDocument were written into the contract between Microsoft and Massachusetts, with hefty penalties for noncompliance. If the state could make a ton of $$$ by suing MS for breach of contract, do you think they would let it slide?
A standards body like ANSI or ISO has some power, but that power is minimal compared to what Microsoft would have over us if we allowed the corporation to impose their secret document standards on us. A truly open standard will be universally readable and legally unencumbered -- and that is a huge advantage for us.
Again I repeat: The problem that you've outlined in your example is more likely due to the age of the format in question and not so much that it's proprietary. You don't have an Access 1.0 conversion program because no one's interested in writing one.
Not so. If the Access 1.0 format were open, BasilBrush could have written a converter himself, regardless of how old the format was. But the format is closed, so he is f*cked.
Massachusetts does not want to be stranded like Basil. Will Microsoft still be around 200 years from now? Who knows. Massachusetts does not want to take the risk of having gigantic amounts of their data becoming unreadable in the future.
Yet no one seems to be considering what will happen when in fact our cars dump more water on the roadways than rain does now.
More water on the road from cars than from rain? That would only be true in the desert regions. But I'm sure the people there will learn to cope at least as well as the people of the Pacific Rainforest do now.
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By the ultimate measure, the Russians sacrificed more than all the other Allies combined. They also destroyed more of the Wehrmacht than all the other Allies combined. There is no doubt that they won in Europe -- the most important theatre by far -- not the U.S. In Europe, the only major U.S. accomplishment has been the undeserved grabbing of credit for winning.
I have provided facts and figures. You have offered only loud and obnoxious assertions that were later proven false. Just like a neocon. Go away.
We got better because when one civilization fell, there were others around to pick up the slack. SirSlud was saying that if our current global civilization crashed, we would all crash. There is no way to tell whether the human race would ever recover, because a global crash has never happened before. It is extremely unwise to do nothing to prepare.
They wouldn't dare, not with Bush twisting their arms.
Also, the mining companies need cash flow. They could hoard their copper for decades in the expectation of increased prices, but that does them little good if they go bankrupt in the meantime due to lack of cash.
The above message was mine. I forgot to log in.
We lost 250,000 soldiers liberating Europe's pathetic "#$. Go tell a real D-Day survivor that we just hung back and let the Reds do the dirty-work. I quadruple-dog dare you.
To which the Europeans and the Russians could reply, "We were winning the war anyway without your tardy help. Please stop implying that you were anything but a minor factor in WW2." They probably should have said so in 1945, but they were too busy burying their dead and clearing away the smoking rubble. These days, they don't say it much because the younger generation probably do not care, except when an American is being obnoxious.
By the way, I have uttered no insults. I will refer you to the words of one of your greatest presidents, Harry S. Truman: "I never give them hell; I just tell them the truth and they think it is hell!"
You may prefer to ignore the truth and stay in the neocons' comfortable fantasy cuckoo land, but remember what I said about the durability of democracy when the voters are deluded.
I meant the war in Europe and should have been that specfic. In any case, the Pacific theatre was minor compared to the European one.
Now I want you to go find one of the families of one of those 250,000 men and women, and call their grandparent "chicken feed". Do you have the courage of your convictions?
Then even one wartime casualty would be a tragedy by your reckoning. And so it is. But there are different levels of horror. A quarter of a million American deaths in WW2 is indeed chicken feed compared to the 17 million dead Russians, or the 60 million in total for that war. The U.S. population and infrastructure were not devastated, unlike most of the other participants.
The U.S. was not totally a slacker in that war. But they got off incredibly lightly compared to the Russians, whose casualties were greater than the total of all the other Allies combined. And as I shall demonstrate, the Russians were going to win the European war regardless of American help. So the typical American chest-beating about being the major force behind victory is totally unearned and undeserved, and really grating to anyone who knows the truth.
Or are you going to hide here in the obscurity of /.?
Ah, a personal insult, the mark of the loser in debate. I am not the one hiding behind a pseudonym here.
Also, stopping an advance is a long way from winning. Without the two-front invasion, Germany and USSR probably would have called it a draw.
No way would it have been a draw. By the end of the war, the Russians were producing tanks, cannons, and airplanes in incredible numbers (look up Magnitogorsk sometime). By the beginning of 1944, six months before the D-Day that Americans like to brag about so loudly, the Russians were rolling back the Germans on all fronts. The Nazis were short of everything by then, even energy; they had to synthesize their own fuel ("ersatz") at ruinous cost, which only hastened their demise. No, by no means would the war have been a stalemate if the U.S. had stayed out. The Russians would have won; there is absolutely no doubt about it.
The real reason behind D-Day, as I said, was to prevent the Soviet Union from overrunning all of continental Europe. It is unsurprising that you are ignorant of this fact; you have been fed lies from birth. And the U.S. government has continued to lie to its people, especially lately, before, during, and after the invasion of Iraq. You may not care whether Iraqis suffer, but remember one thing: a democracy cannot survive if the voters are ignorant of the truth.
Yep, hanging back was exactly what the USA did in World War II. You say there were 250,000 American casualties in the war? The Russians lost 17 million people; the U.S.'s mere quarter million is chicken feed in comparison.
In fact, it has been argued that the U.S. stayed out of WW II until it became obvious, a year and a half after the destruction of much of the Wehrmacht in the Battle of Stalingrad, that the Soviet Union was about to win. And then the U.S. finally invaded Normandy on June 6, 1944 -- to stop the Soviets from taking over Europe, not to defeat the already stumbling Nazis.
Pro-Nazi sentiment was actually pretty strong in the U.S. in those days, believe it or not. IBM was a noted collaborator. So was George W. Bush's grandfather, Prescott Bush, who was convicted for helping to finance Hitler's rise to power.
So American triumphalism about WW II really grates on those of us who know the truth.
So? Old age is 100% fatal, shouldn't that deserve a screaming headline every day? Of course not. A large number of auto fatalities a year is the unavoidable price we pay for allowing fallible humans to be drivers. And as I said, a few fatalities (due to mechanical failure, etc.) are unavoidable even if the drivers were perfect automatons. Anything that is routine and completely unavoidable, such as old age and auto accidents, is not news.
In contrast, the second invasion of Iraq was eminently avoidable, so avoidable in fact that Bush, Cheney, and the Neocons used the grossest deceit to con the American public into it. And that is why the American deaths in Iraq are so much more important than auto fatalities: because democracy will fail unless the people in the highest reaches of government are held accountable for their utterly dishonest manipulations in matters of life and death.
Bush, Cheney, and the Neocons should fear the vengeance of the American people, because it is coming. It is coming no matter how desperately the neocons try to distract the people with side issues such as auto accidents.
Many auto fatalities are essentially Acts of God (mechanical failure, slick road surfaces, deer crossings). Practically all such fatalities are unintentional, which is why we call them accidents.
In contrast, all American deaths in Iraq are the result of a deliberate, grossly dishonest Act of Bush.
An old Russian joke: "Both America and the Soviet Union have freedom of speech. In America, you also have freedom after speech."
Sadly, freedom after speech may no longer be true in Bush's America, especially after the Patriot Act.
The Cretacious "SuperCroc" was 40 ft long.
No, Microsoft loves the idea of software patents -- it's the only defense they have against open source (in the long run).
I think Microsoft is fighting Eolas for two reasons. First, if they lost, Eolas could demand a continuing royalty from MS, which would amount to admitting a legal encumbrance on Windows. MS would hate that.
And second, MS is perhaps hoping to bankrupt Eolas by litigation, then take over the patent and use it as a huge hammer against open source.
C-14 dating has been calibrated many times against samples where we can directly count off the years, such as tree growth rings, annual lake sediment layers, cultural artifacts for which we have documented historical dates, pollen layers, ice cores, oceanic sediments, etc. etc. If the C-14 method were to agree with only one of these other techniques, we could ascribe the agreement to coincidence. But if all of these techniques independently agree with the C-14 dating and with each other, the "coincidence" explanation becomes about as likely as a flat earth.
The evidence vouching for the accuracy of C-14 dating is immense. You may as well dispute the evidence for quantum mechanics, even though the computer on which you write to express your disagreement would not function without the quantum mechanical aspects of semiconductors.
The scientific method has produced amazing things like lasers and computers, neither of which would work without quantum mechanics. Do you suppose that this same scientific method might be equally excellent at discerning the true history of the Earth?
What truly frightens the publishers, I think, is the potential for Google to put them entirely out of business. If you can find any book you want through Google, then the next logical step is to buy the books directly from Google. The major publishers clearly see their potential obsolescence and will fight it with every dirty trick at their disposal.
It's the same for Apple and the record companies. It's too late to kill Apple and iTunes, but if the record companies recover control over the online prices of their songs, they will maintain their power over the music industry.
He doesn't need a proposal to limit the damage that oligarchs can do, because the proper laws are already in the books. They just need to be enforced.
For example, the anti-trust laws are pretty much a dead letter today.... and, to the surprise of no one who knows even a smidgeon of history, we are presently repeating the horrific corruption of the Gilded Age. A one-time learner is young and naive, as the U.S. was during the first age of the robber barons; a two-time learner is just plain stupid.
One of the clearest and most insightful articles I have read on /. in a long while. Wish I had mod points today.
See L'Anse aux Meadows, the remains of an 11th century Viking settlement in Newfoundland, Canada. Lots of Norse technology found there, including a Viking-style forge.
It wouldn't slide if total compatibility with OpenDocument were written into the contract between Microsoft and Massachusetts, with hefty penalties for noncompliance. If the state could make a ton of $$$ by suing MS for breach of contract, do you think they would let it slide?
A standards body like ANSI or ISO has some power, but that power is minimal compared to what Microsoft would have over us if we allowed the corporation to impose their secret document standards on us. A truly open standard will be universally readable and legally unencumbered -- and that is a huge advantage for us.
Massachusetts could simply refuse to buy any version of MS Office that was crippled with respect to the OpenDocument format.
Not so. If the Access 1.0 format were open, BasilBrush could have written a converter himself, regardless of how old the format was. But the format is closed, so he is f*cked.
Massachusetts does not want to be stranded like Basil. Will Microsoft still be around 200 years from now? Who knows. Massachusetts does not want to take the risk of having gigantic amounts of their data becoming unreadable in the future.
We'd have to petrify the damned trees, because any decomposition of the wood would return the CO2 right back into the atmosphere.
The picture shows a pellet inside the flame of a cigarette lighter. Being a cynical fellow, I have to ask: is there any hydrogen inside the pellet?
More water on the road from cars than from rain? That would only be true in the desert regions. But I'm sure the people there will learn to cope at least as well as the people of the Pacific Rainforest do now.