The choice is, do you use a rechargable "hard battery" that has all sorts of nasty stuff in it that stays nasty even after the battery is dead or do you use a DMFC where what's left inside is water and maybe a little bit of unreacted methanol? My guess is that you wouldn't so much recharge them as maybe get them refilled. If they are refillable, that would mean they are much more environmentally friendly than traditional batteries (rechargable or not). If they aren't refillable, hopefully there is nothing too nasty left when they go flat and at worst you have a little extra junk at the landfill.
Legal principles that depend on technogical nuances rarely survive. I would include "access to the file system" as a technological nuance. Back to your example of the MP3 player with GPL code, that the end user can upload files can be construed as "having access to the file system" but that is not the same as being able to modify the function of the device by uploading a new software load.
My advice to anyone involved in "GPL activism" along this route is, don't go there. Clarity and simplicity are far more important in being able to prove the case than nuances of technology.
Take a step back and consider who has more to gain and more to lose in this situation: the probably non-technical employee or soldier vs. the owner of a piece of hardware like an MP3 player or X-box. As use of GPL software grows, more and more people who don't have the foggiest clue as to what the difference is between GPL and proprietary systems will end up using GPLed programs. To most of these end-users, having or not having access to the source code is moot so why push something on them that they probably don't even want? On the other hand, the poor SOB who owns the box has the greatest stake in being able to keep the box running and behaving; not the person who happens to get stuck using the box.
Back to the details of our debate... I'm glad you agree with me:-)
Maybe not the end-user who runs the program each day, but the IT dept who installed it certainly does.
I'm not saying that no one at the corporation has a right to the code; I would, however, assert that the end user who simply uses a system provided by their employer not only isn't entitled to access to the source but also probably doesn't want it. That the IT department has an absolute right to the source code under the GPL is one of the most powerful rights that has been asserted in the history of computers. But the IT department has that right as agents for the corporation who owns the box that runs the program that they pay someone who currently happens to be on their payroll to use.
FSF can attempt to legislate this through licensing but I wish they'd put there time and efforts into things with:
a better pay-off,
that are more likely to hold up in court,
and actually benefit the "right" person (the person with a financial stake in kepping the GPLed program running).
This thread is getting pretty stale, I can reached by e-mail as dave AT davenjudy dot org if you wish to continue chatting about this.
But that's just it, my employer does not "give" me the binaries. They provide a computer along with a desk, chair, phone, etc. in order for me to do my job. The software installed on the computer remains the property of my employer. This is the same regardless of whether the software is a proprietary system such as Windoze or an open source system. Ownership of the software does not transfer to me simply because it is installed on a computer I use anymore than I can unplug my phone from the wall and take it home with me.
The same is true with a user of a governement owned computer. He or she typically neither owns the computer nor the software installed on it.
Again, IANAL, but I think the same case law that allows a software publisher to go after a business that has illegal copies of software installed on the businesses systems governs here. The person operating the computer is not considered to be the end user or at fault, the business is. Likewise, if a business or the governement installs Linux on a computer, the business or the government that installed the software is considered to be the user.
One counter-example may clear up why this is the only way that makes sense: if I set up a kiosk system based on Linux, do I have to provide a copy of the source code to every person who uses the system? And I'm envisioning a kiosk that would be set up in a public place to say give directions to anyone who wishes to use it. By the definition of user you are attempting to assert, I would.
The "user" is whoever owns the system the software runs on.
That would be like every cash register in a Linux based point of sale system coming with its own set of source CDs.
That's an interesting question, and one I don't see as 100% resolved yet. It comes down to the meaning of "give the binaries to" (because anyone with the binaries can demand the source). Does a person "have" the binaries, if they're embedded in a device whose filesystem he can't access?
Then, what about the related case of a consumer-product (like an MP3 player) having a GPL program embedded in the firmware? Is that end-user entitled to the source code? From watching RMS, it seems he wants the answer to be yes. (Of course, this is a little different from a cash register or battle tank, as the user owns that hardware)
I would hope that something reasonable could be worked out in both my example (cash register) and yours (MP3 player). The bottom line is that the majority of people who install and use GPL software have little or no interest in having the source code and wouldn't have the foggiest idea of what to do with it if they did. I would think it should be a matter of making the source code "available" from the company's web site or whatever. Back to the examples, what good does having the source code do if you have no way of uploading a new version onto some sort of embedded system like a cash register or MP3 player?
While the GPL may not distinguish between an individual user and an "acquiring agency", legally things are pretty straightforward. IANAL but I think the legal concept is that the employer or owner of the equipment (cash register or tank) is the "user". The person working the cash register or driving the tank is doing so at someone else's behest. Only the governement or the store that owns the cash register has legal standing to request the source code. In some ways, the tank driver's and clerk's legal position in this regard is little different that the equipment they're using. The GPL may not recognize entities like businesses and the governement but the law does.
Consumer devices (like the MP3 player example) are more interesting in this regard. Look at the Linux port to the X-box and then consider what would happen if somebody came out with a similar system that sold off-the-shelf based on Linux.
Most of the stuff I worked on had little or no demand outside of the governement/DoD world. We could and did request code written for related projects to see if it was reusable. This was all free for the taking but was rarely useful since it was often written for another platform and/or in a language that wasn't compatible with what we were doing. Interesting to hear how the DoD software game has changed in the 10 or so years since I left TRW.
The main thing I was trying to point out was that any changes Boeing or SAIC make to Linux will probably be given back to the open source community. This would be the case even if some portions of the application were classified (which I doubt since its a command and control system but that's beside the point).
I also thought it was worthwhile to point out that, from a licensing perspective, the end user is the acquiring agency; not some private out in the field since there seemed to be some confusion as to how the Army would be providing source CDs with every system. That would be like every cash register in a Linux based point of sale system coming with its own set of source CDs.
The only counter example I can give you is a program that I helped write in 1982 that was still in use by the Air Force in 1995 but only after it had been ported from running on an IBM 370 to a Sun workstation. It was cheaper to port it than it was to continue running it on a mainframe.
I would guess that they will go with a very stable, vendor supported version of Linux like Sun's "White Rabbit" which is simply their OEM version of Red Hat. The "current" version says its Red Hat 7.1 with a 2.4.9 kernel. If this is the way things work out, the OS vendor will be responsible for maintaining the OS. To the best of my knowledge, they have all been very good about returning updates to the community.
Like the B-52 though, the Army will probably continue using the system (and thus maintaining the OS) 'til God only knows when. If they field with the 2.4 kernel, that version (or whatever version the system gets fielded on) will be supported for at least the following ten years.
When you develop software under governement contract, the governement owns the code. Only when some software is "Commercial off the shelf" (COTS) does the governement not get the source code. I worked for a defense contractor for twelve years and every scrap of code that went into the systems including test scripts and drivers, makefiles, etc. was governement property once it was accepted. The main thing was to document anything that wasn't developed for whatever program so that the governement didn't think they were entitled to that too.
A few of other points...
The acquiring agency is generally considered to be the end user. Not the guy in the field who sees it as a fire control or logistics system.
Usually the source code for something like this won't be classified. Its a command and control system so its only useful to someone else when it has live data in it. Think of it as a telephone: its not the phone that's classified, its the conversation that's held using the phone.
The developer, Boeing, will have every incentive to provide patches for commercialy applicable code back to the Linux development community. Otherwise, they have to maintain their own set of patches and independently apply them and test them every time they go to a new release. I'm guessing they WON'T provide the device driver for the Patriot battery though.
One last item, a couple of systems I worked on when I was with said defense contractor were elements of what the Army then called the Army Tactical Command and Control System (ATTCS) which consisted primarily of HP9000/3X0 workstations running the current flavor of HP-UX and communicating over a variety of tactical comm gear. So this isn't really new but looks like just the next evolution of a concept that has been in use by the Army for about 10 years.
In the '60s Senator Everett Dirksen said, "A Billion here and a billion there and soon you're talking about real money." And, by the way, he was talking about the defense budget, then.
Just spread a rumor that they're using unlicensed copies of Windows, IIS, Office, etc. Then just have the Army follow the Microsoft lawyers and its all over in a couple of days.
Wrong term. Collateral damage is unintentional (and probably undesired) damage that occurs near your *intended target*. In this case, its very unlikely the diplomat who was killed had anything to do with the "Nigerian Money Scam" e-mail. For the killing of the diplomat to really be "collateral damage", the killer would have to have been shooting at the actual scammer and accidently also hit the diplomat. In this case the killer lashed out at someone who had some vague connection to the people who scammed him.
BTW, even with smart weapons its possible to get collateral damage since even if you precisely hit your intended target, the explosion may cause damage outside of the specific target you wanted to hit. That's collateral damage. If you bomb the wrong target (e.g., the Chinese embasy in Belgrade), its not "collateral damage"; you screwed up and hit the wrong target. That's what this guy did.
Because it would be better to designate them as a "varmit" which means no season and no rules. In Colorado you can go after any critter designated as a "varmit" using any technogy you like (semi-automatic weapons, lights, night vision goggles, lures, etc. just about anything below tactical nukes).
Yeah, but I'm talking about the scenes where the car throws *a ton* of dirt and gravel. Well compacted, dry dirt road with very little loose stuff means you also don't throw much.
Hollyweird wants both: tire squealing sound and lots of stuff getting thrown. The problem is it doesn't work that way. The squeal comes from the rubber tire rotating against a solid surface. As soon as you put something that isn't solid under the tire for it to throw, the tire stops sqealing and starts just throwing stuff. Saying "dirt road" was a lot shorter than explaining all of this.
But it still wasn't an accurate depiction of a programmer:
1) Programmer: pimply faced, overweight, pasty and with poor personal hygene. 2) So, John Travolta's character would have had to have a gun on her; not him. 3) The programmer would be be saying, "Not now, I busy. And then I want to play some video games." 4) She's saying, "NO! NO! Anything, anyone but that!"
The *first rule* for viewing anything that comes out of Hollywood is SUSPEND DISBELIEF. Why stop at complaining that Hollywood doesn't portray "normal people" accurately? Hell, these are the same people whose guns never run out of ammunition (unless its needed for the plot), people firing pistols can hit their target from a car going 90 mph down a bumpy residential street while the driver swerves to avoid obstacles and someone else shooting back at them, explosions in space make noise, tires squeal on dirt roads, etc. Why take Hollywood to task for not accurately portraying some "normal people" when they can't even accurately portray physical reality?
This may explain why my taste in movies from Hollywood tends towards commedies (they're supposed to not represent reality) or fantasy (what reality?).
Not that you need any convincing but take a look at InternalMemo.com. Yeah, some of these are just memos that somebody decided to post but I've seen a few that look like somebody shared the wrong directory (like a lay-off memo that was posted the day before the lay-offs hit).
Here is a link to the (very short) discussion thread on 2cpu.com regarding being slashdotted. To quote one post, "Which just goes to prove: the Slashdot effect is negated by competent administration (and SMP of course:-))". Here is a description of their web-server.
A minor tidbit of trivia... Its bad enough that the general staffs on both sides threw masses of infantry at entrenched positions and automatic weapons resulting in thousands of casualties in the hope that they could achieve a "breakthrough." What got to me though was their expression for the steady trickle of casualties that simply resulted from trench warfare: "wastage." Almost reminds you of a food distributor writing off a small percentage of his stock to "spoilage" or to someone who transports liquids assuming a certain amount of spillage.
I can defend the decisions to fight the great battles since the generals had only a limited "toolset" that, in hindsight, was obviously not capable of achieving the task at hand. But somehow the inhumanity of just accepting that a certain number of lives would be lost day in and day out, day after day to no apparent gain just boggles my mind.
There were only the feeblest of peace feelers, all totally unofficial, from Japan prior to the rapid collapse following the dropping of the atomic bombs. A good, single volume political history of the war from the Japanese perspective is John Tolland's "Rising Sun." That book and every other I have read concerning the final days of World War II in the Pacific paint a picture of the Japanese military still firmly in charge and committed to continuing the war (there's also that little matter of the mutiny that attempted to steal the emperor's tape recording announcing the decision to accept the allies terms). The allied demand that Japan surrender unconditionally probably contributed to this but I somehow doubt that they would have instantly surrendered had the position of the emperor been guaranteed. Especially since many of the upper military either committed suicide or were tried (and usually executed) as war criminals after the surrender.
The decision to allow the emperor to remain wasn't actually made until after the occupation of Japan. If I remember correctly, the surrender document only says that the decision will be left to the Japanese people. Once MacArthur was in place, he decided that it would be easier to continue with the emperor than without. I think there was an election but there was no doubt what the result was going to be.
Would you be so kind as to provide ANY sort of citation of historical sources as a basis for your assertions.
A few other details:
Secret (at the time) sessions of the Potsdam conference (late July 1945) specifically addressed coordinating the entry of the Soviet Union into the fight against the Japanese. The conference was in session at the time the first (test) bomb was exploded at Alamagordo, New Mexico yet the planning for the Soviet's entry continued.
The Soviets accelerated their schedule ahead of what they had promised at Potsdam and attacked on 8 August 1945 after news of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima became known. Far from being intimidated, Stalin attacked Japan to, "get in on the spoils."
Most of the people in power in "the west" still thought that they could work with Stalin and the Soviets. The setting up of Soviet "puppet goverments" in eastern Europe didn't really get started until after the allies were in post-war disarmament (after Japan had surrendered).
I think you'll find that each of these items is a well documented historical fact which would seem to indicate that the Cold War had not yet begun. Likewise, you will find the bibliography in "Downfall" to be very well done as far as citing sources indicating that the leadership of the time hardly believed that "...Japan would surrender soon enough." There are several other books on the subject but the one fact I like to cite is this: the U.S. military has not had to strike any additional "Purple Heart" medals since the end of World War II. The stocks they created for the expected casualties from the invaision of Japan have been more than sufficient for the Korean conflict, Viet Nam, etc. I would take this as indicationg that we didn't expect a "push over".
Actually, by the time the bombs were dropped, the Japanese had stopped firing at small flights of B-29s. These were usually photo-recon or weather flights and not worth opposing. If I remember correctly, there were about 10 cities on the target list and they had, to a great extent, been spared from the regular incendiary attacks that had destroyed most comparable sized Japanese cities. Also, as is pointed out elsewhere in this thread and is well known, Nagasaki was the secondary target; the primary was too obscured by cloud cover. Finally, the general consensus is that Nagaski was actually a poor target since the hilly terrain limited the blast effects of the bomb as compared to Hiroshima.
I havn't read anything that says the target cities were chosen because they were lightly defnded.
You might try reading Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire to get some idea about what the military and politicians thought would have happened if we hadn't dropped the atomic bombs and had had to invade the home islands. Actually, there was a significant amount of discussion among the scientists, military and politicos about whether the bombs should be dropped on a city, exploded over Tokyo Bay or other uninhabited demonstration point. Rhodes' book goes into this as do most of the histories of the end of the war with Japan. Conventional attacks on Japan continued for about another week including some of the largest incendiary attacks of the campaign because it was still unclear that the Japanese would surrender in spite of the atomic bombs. Finally, there was a barely contained mutiny of hardcore zealots within the Japanese military who attempted to prevent the Imperial edict announcing the decision to surrender from being read. So even with the atomic bombings, there were those within the Japanese military who wanted to continue the fight.
(Hint: try studying some history instead of just whining).
If you want to see the warts come out on an immature video driver, try to use it on a high end dualie. Hard to run benchmarks when the driver keeps barfing.
Even when the benchmark isn't multithreaded, having a second CPU means one CPU is free from all of the other chores to simply run the benchmark. Example: I get a decent frame rate with Quake II running under WINE in a window on my dualie. Try that on a single CPU box.
Slashdot Mirror
The Inforworld link (that I was submitting at the same time that this story got posted, BTW), says they will be available in 2004.
The choice is, do you use a rechargable "hard battery" that has all sorts of nasty stuff in it that stays nasty even after the battery is dead or do you use a DMFC where what's left inside is water and maybe a little bit of unreacted methanol? My guess is that you wouldn't so much recharge them as maybe get them refilled. If they are refillable, that would mean they are much more environmentally friendly than traditional batteries (rechargable or not). If they aren't refillable, hopefully there is nothing too nasty left when they go flat and at worst you have a little extra junk at the landfill.
My advice to anyone involved in "GPL activism" along this route is, don't go there. Clarity and simplicity are far more important in being able to prove the case than nuances of technology.
Take a step back and consider who has more to gain and more to lose in this situation: the probably non-technical employee or soldier vs. the owner of a piece of hardware like an MP3 player or X-box. As use of GPL software grows, more and more people who don't have the foggiest clue as to what the difference is between GPL and proprietary systems will end up using GPLed programs. To most of these end-users, having or not having access to the source code is moot so why push something on them that they probably don't even want? On the other hand, the poor SOB who owns the box has the greatest stake in being able to keep the box running and behaving; not the person who happens to get stuck using the box.
Back to the details of our debate... I'm glad you agree with me :-)
I'm not saying that no one at the corporation has a right to the code; I would, however, assert that the end user who simply uses a system provided by their employer not only isn't entitled to access to the source but also probably doesn't want it. That the IT department has an absolute right to the source code under the GPL is one of the most powerful rights that has been asserted in the history of computers. But the IT department has that right as agents for the corporation who owns the box that runs the program that they pay someone who currently happens to be on their payroll to use.
FSF can attempt to legislate this through licensing but I wish they'd put there time and efforts into things with:
This thread is getting pretty stale, I can reached by e-mail as dave AT davenjudy dot org if you wish to continue chatting about this.
But that's just it, my employer does not "give" me the binaries. They provide a computer along with a desk, chair, phone, etc. in order for me to do my job. The software installed on the computer remains the property of my employer. This is the same regardless of whether the software is a proprietary system such as Windoze or an open source system. Ownership of the software does not transfer to me simply because it is installed on a computer I use anymore than I can unplug my phone from the wall and take it home with me.
The same is true with a user of a governement owned computer. He or she typically neither owns the computer nor the software installed on it.
Again, IANAL, but I think the same case law that allows a software publisher to go after a business that has illegal copies of software installed on the businesses systems governs here. The person operating the computer is not considered to be the end user or at fault, the business is. Likewise, if a business or the governement installs Linux on a computer, the business or the government that installed the software is considered to be the user.
One counter-example may clear up why this is the only way that makes sense: if I set up a kiosk system based on Linux, do I have to provide a copy of the source code to every person who uses the system? And I'm envisioning a kiosk that would be set up in a public place to say give directions to anyone who wishes to use it. By the definition of user you are attempting to assert, I would.
The "user" is whoever owns the system the software runs on.
I would hope that something reasonable could be worked out in both my example (cash register) and yours (MP3 player). The bottom line is that the majority of people who install and use GPL software have little or no interest in having the source code and wouldn't have the foggiest idea of what to do with it if they did. I would think it should be a matter of making the source code "available" from the company's web site or whatever. Back to the examples, what good does having the source code do if you have no way of uploading a new version onto some sort of embedded system like a cash register or MP3 player?
While the GPL may not distinguish between an individual user and an "acquiring agency", legally things are pretty straightforward. IANAL but I think the legal concept is that the employer or owner of the equipment (cash register or tank) is the "user". The person working the cash register or driving the tank is doing so at someone else's behest. Only the governement or the store that owns the cash register has legal standing to request the source code. In some ways, the tank driver's and clerk's legal position in this regard is little different that the equipment they're using. The GPL may not recognize entities like businesses and the governement but the law does.
Consumer devices (like the MP3 player example) are more interesting in this regard. Look at the Linux port to the X-box and then consider what would happen if somebody came out with a similar system that sold off-the-shelf based on Linux.
Most of the stuff I worked on had little or no demand outside of the governement/DoD world. We could and did request code written for related projects to see if it was reusable. This was all free for the taking but was rarely useful since it was often written for another platform and/or in a language that wasn't compatible with what we were doing. Interesting to hear how the DoD software game has changed in the 10 or so years since I left TRW.
The main thing I was trying to point out was that any changes Boeing or SAIC make to Linux will probably be given back to the open source community. This would be the case even if some portions of the application were classified (which I doubt since its a command and control system but that's beside the point).
I also thought it was worthwhile to point out that, from a licensing perspective, the end user is the acquiring agency; not some private out in the field since there seemed to be some confusion as to how the Army would be providing source CDs with every system. That would be like every cash register in a Linux based point of sale system coming with its own set of source CDs.
The only counter example I can give you is a program that I helped write in 1982 that was still in use by the Air Force in 1995 but only after it had been ported from running on an IBM 370 to a Sun workstation. It was cheaper to port it than it was to continue running it on a mainframe.
I would guess that they will go with a very stable, vendor supported version of Linux like Sun's "White Rabbit" which is simply their OEM version of Red Hat. The "current" version says its Red Hat 7.1 with a 2.4.9 kernel. If this is the way things work out, the OS vendor will be responsible for maintaining the OS. To the best of my knowledge, they have all been very good about returning updates to the community.
Like the B-52 though, the Army will probably continue using the system (and thus maintaining the OS) 'til God only knows when. If they field with the 2.4 kernel, that version (or whatever version the system gets fielded on) will be supported for at least the following ten years.
When you develop software under governement contract, the governement owns the code. Only when some software is "Commercial off the shelf" (COTS) does the governement not get the source code. I worked for a defense contractor for twelve years and every scrap of code that went into the systems including test scripts and drivers, makefiles, etc. was governement property once it was accepted. The main thing was to document anything that wasn't developed for whatever program so that the governement didn't think they were entitled to that too.
A few of other points...
The acquiring agency is generally considered to be the end user. Not the guy in the field who sees it as a fire control or logistics system.
Usually the source code for something like this won't be classified. Its a command and control system so its only useful to someone else when it has live data in it. Think of it as a telephone: its not the phone that's classified, its the conversation that's held using the phone.
The developer, Boeing, will have every incentive to provide patches for commercialy applicable code back to the Linux development community. Otherwise, they have to maintain their own set of patches and independently apply them and test them every time they go to a new release. I'm guessing they WON'T provide the device driver for the Patriot battery though.
One last item, a couple of systems I worked on when I was with said defense contractor were elements of what the Army then called the Army Tactical Command and Control System (ATTCS) which consisted primarily of HP9000/3X0 workstations running the current flavor of HP-UX and communicating over a variety of tactical comm gear. So this isn't really new but looks like just the next evolution of a concept that has been in use by the Army for about 10 years.
In the '60s Senator Everett Dirksen said, "A Billion here and a billion there and soon you're talking about real money." And, by the way, he was talking about the defense budget, then.
Just spread a rumor that they're using unlicensed copies of Windows, IIS, Office, etc. Then just have the Army follow the Microsoft lawyers and its all over in a couple of days.
Wrong term. Collateral damage is unintentional (and probably undesired) damage that occurs near your *intended target*. In this case, its very unlikely the diplomat who was killed had anything to do with the "Nigerian Money Scam" e-mail. For the killing of the diplomat to really be "collateral damage", the killer would have to have been shooting at the actual scammer and accidently also hit the diplomat. In this case the killer lashed out at someone who had some vague connection to the people who scammed him.
BTW, even with smart weapons its possible to get collateral damage since even if you precisely hit your intended target, the explosion may cause damage outside of the specific target you wanted to hit. That's collateral damage. If you bomb the wrong target (e.g., the Chinese embasy in Belgrade), its not "collateral damage"; you screwed up and hit the wrong target. That's what this guy did.
Because it would be better to designate them as a "varmit" which means no season and no rules. In Colorado you can go after any critter designated as a "varmit" using any technogy you like (semi-automatic weapons, lights, night vision goggles, lures, etc. just about anything below tactical nukes).
We don't need no stinkin' tags!
Yeah, but I'm talking about the scenes where the car throws *a ton* of dirt and gravel. Well compacted, dry dirt road with very little loose stuff means you also don't throw much.
Hollyweird wants both: tire squealing sound and lots of stuff getting thrown. The problem is it doesn't work that way. The squeal comes from the rubber tire rotating against a solid surface. As soon as you put something that isn't solid under the tire for it to throw, the tire stops sqealing and starts just throwing stuff. Saying "dirt road" was a lot shorter than explaining all of this.
But it still wasn't an accurate depiction of a programmer:
1) Programmer: pimply faced, overweight, pasty and with poor personal hygene.
2) So, John Travolta's character would have had to have a gun on her; not him.
3) The programmer would be be saying, "Not now, I busy. And then I want to play some video games."
4) She's saying, "NO! NO! Anything, anyone but that!"
The *first rule* for viewing anything that comes out of Hollywood is SUSPEND DISBELIEF. Why stop at complaining that Hollywood doesn't portray "normal people" accurately? Hell, these are the same people whose guns never run out of ammunition (unless its needed for the plot), people firing pistols can hit their target from a car going 90 mph down a bumpy residential street while the driver swerves to avoid obstacles and someone else shooting back at them, explosions in space make noise, tires squeal on dirt roads, etc. Why take Hollywood to task for not accurately portraying some "normal people" when they can't even accurately portray physical reality?
This may explain why my taste in movies from Hollywood tends towards commedies (they're supposed to not represent reality) or fantasy (what reality?).
Not that you need any convincing but take a look at InternalMemo.com. Yeah, some of these are just memos that somebody decided to post but I've seen a few that look like somebody shared the wrong directory (like a lay-off memo that was posted the day before the lay-offs hit).
Here is a link to the (very short) discussion thread on 2cpu.com regarding being slashdotted. To quote one post, "Which just goes to prove: the Slashdot effect is negated by competent administration (and SMP of course :-))". Here is a description of their web-server.
A minor tidbit of trivia... Its bad enough that the general staffs on both sides threw masses of infantry at entrenched positions and automatic weapons resulting in thousands of casualties in the hope that they could achieve a "breakthrough." What got to me though was their expression for the steady trickle of casualties that simply resulted from trench warfare: "wastage." Almost reminds you of a food distributor writing off a small percentage of his stock to "spoilage" or to someone who transports liquids assuming a certain amount of spillage.
I can defend the decisions to fight the great battles since the generals had only a limited "toolset" that, in hindsight, was obviously not capable of achieving the task at hand. But somehow the inhumanity of just accepting that a certain number of lives would be lost day in and day out, day after day to no apparent gain just boggles my mind.
There were only the feeblest of peace feelers, all totally unofficial, from Japan prior to the rapid collapse following the dropping of the atomic bombs. A good, single volume political history of the war from the Japanese perspective is John Tolland's "Rising Sun." That book and every other I have read concerning the final days of World War II in the Pacific paint a picture of the Japanese military still firmly in charge and committed to continuing the war (there's also that little matter of the mutiny that attempted to steal the emperor's tape recording announcing the decision to accept the allies terms). The allied demand that Japan surrender unconditionally probably contributed to this but I somehow doubt that they would have instantly surrendered had the position of the emperor been guaranteed. Especially since many of the upper military either committed suicide or were tried (and usually executed) as war criminals after the surrender.
The decision to allow the emperor to remain wasn't actually made until after the occupation of Japan. If I remember correctly, the surrender document only says that the decision will be left to the Japanese people. Once MacArthur was in place, he decided that it would be easier to continue with the emperor than without. I think there was an election but there was no doubt what the result was going to be.
The "great white north" is probably safe from invaision by Yankee Imperialists: we don't want a bunch of militant Quebecois either!
Would you be so kind as to provide ANY sort of citation of historical sources as a basis for your assertions.
A few other details:
Secret (at the time) sessions of the Potsdam conference (late July 1945) specifically addressed coordinating the entry of the Soviet Union into the fight against the Japanese. The conference was in session at the time the first (test) bomb was exploded at Alamagordo, New Mexico yet the planning for the Soviet's entry continued.
The Soviets accelerated their schedule ahead of what they had promised at Potsdam and attacked on 8 August 1945 after news of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima became known. Far from being intimidated, Stalin attacked Japan to, "get in on the spoils."
Most of the people in power in "the west" still thought that they could work with Stalin and the Soviets. The setting up of Soviet "puppet goverments" in eastern Europe didn't really get started until after the allies were in post-war disarmament (after Japan had surrendered).
I think you'll find that each of these items is a well documented historical fact which would seem to indicate that the Cold War had not yet begun. Likewise, you will find the bibliography in "Downfall" to be very well done as far as citing sources indicating that the leadership of the time hardly believed that "...Japan would surrender soon enough." There are several other books on the subject but the one fact I like to cite is this: the U.S. military has not had to strike any additional "Purple Heart" medals since the end of World War II. The stocks they created for the expected casualties from the invaision of Japan have been more than sufficient for the Korean conflict, Viet Nam, etc. I would take this as indicationg that we didn't expect a "push over".
and let's see... there are umpteen bazillion guys and two girls (one of whom is actually a transexual).
OK. So its really not that bad but let's just say the ratio is probably closer to my guess than 1:1.
Actually, by the time the bombs were dropped, the Japanese had stopped firing at small flights of B-29s. These were usually photo-recon or weather flights and not worth opposing. If I remember correctly, there were about 10 cities on the target list and they had, to a great extent, been spared from the regular incendiary attacks that had destroyed most comparable sized Japanese cities. Also, as is pointed out elsewhere in this thread and is well known, Nagasaki was the secondary target; the primary was too obscured by cloud cover. Finally, the general consensus is that Nagaski was actually a poor target since the hilly terrain limited the blast effects of the bomb as compared to Hiroshima.
I havn't read anything that says the target cities were chosen because they were lightly defnded.
You might try reading Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire to get some idea about what the military and politicians thought would have happened if we hadn't dropped the atomic bombs and had had to invade the home islands. Actually, there was a significant amount of discussion among the scientists, military and politicos about whether the bombs should be dropped on a city, exploded over Tokyo Bay or other uninhabited demonstration point. Rhodes' book goes into this as do most of the histories of the end of the war with Japan. Conventional attacks on Japan continued for about another week including some of the largest incendiary attacks of the campaign because it was still unclear that the Japanese would surrender in spite of the atomic bombs. Finally, there was a barely contained mutiny of hardcore zealots within the Japanese military who attempted to prevent the Imperial edict announcing the decision to surrender from being read. So even with the atomic bombings, there were those within the Japanese military who wanted to continue the fight. (Hint: try studying some history instead of just whining).
If you want to see the warts come out on an immature video driver, try to use it on a high end dualie. Hard to run benchmarks when the driver keeps barfing.
Even when the benchmark isn't multithreaded, having a second CPU means one CPU is free from all of the other chores to simply run the benchmark. Example: I get a decent frame rate with Quake II running under WINE in a window on my dualie. Try that on a single CPU box.