yes, the T34 was far far superior to the Sherman. however, by 1945, tanks without air cover were targets. we would have controlled the skies absolutely. the russians had nothing to contend with the heavy bomber forces. we'd have been able to interrupt their supply lines and destroy their armies in the field. no, it wouldn't have been pretty, and no it wouldn't have been easy, but rather tahn stopping at moscow, we could very well have chosen the middle ground, as I said in the orig post, make them go back to 1939 borders. it's a whole different world then. i do think that we were aware of what it would mean to go to moscow, and it would make our efforts in Iraq look like a cake walk. i think the general consensus of the anti-communists was to get them out of europe proper. that was doable, and probably necessary. but hell, we survived, eh?
you are correct. the world was dramatically reshaped after ww1, however, it was basically realigned after ww2. much of the world's problems today date from versailles. we never dealt with ethnic nationalism and we basically created pan-arabism. while we dealt with militaristic imperialism, we reverted back to a 19th century model of realpolitik and balance of power. we supported thug dictators so longs they fought communism and we sought alliances such as NATO and SEATO.
funny, as we try to change the calculus of the last 50 years, we're being criticized. it's as if we had a century of peace or something.
not surprised you got modded flamebait. truth is, that yeah, there were many in the gov't and military that wanted to keep on going east. ans yes, we should have. in fact, one of the reasons many german generals surrendered to us so fast (such as the German army in the Ruhr and the Rhineland) was that they full well expected us to fight the Soviets. Not going to Berlin was purely a political decision. In fact, there were many political decisions, such as not giving Patton the resources he needed and diverting them to Monty (that useless piece of...). We could have, and very well should have demanded that the Russians head back to the 1939 boundaries (you know, pre non-aggression pact) which would have gotten them out of Poland, et al. Of all the things that came out of Versailles in 1919, people forget that one of the major concerns of the allies was to prevent what Trotsky called "the red bridge to Europe" which he considered Germany. That is the reason they created Poland, Czechoslovakia, etc., after WW1, to prevent the spread of bolshevism. Besides punishing Germany, which was priority #1 (and 2, 3, 4, and 5 !!!), the fear of bolshevism was a lingering concern. In fact, Poland defeated Russia in a war in 1921 to stop that very thing. There was a precedent for concern over soviet expansion and it should have been dealt with then. Had the soviets been isolated, we could have contained them much better, not had to spend trillions to defend europe, and could have weakened the commies tremendously. but you are entirely right, there was little diffrence between the soviets and the nazis, save for the fact that the communists had penetratedhigh into the government here and had lots of supporters in America. and yes, alger hiss was a spy.
i finally installed ubuntu this weekend. i had always been a mandrake fan, and also have used fedora some, but neither would recognize my belkin f5d6001 (admtek chipset) wireless pci card, or would configure it. also, couldn't get a linksys wusb11 (usb wifi) to work either. spare me the howto's. a modern distro should just do it. period. ubuntu did the belkin perfect, never tried the linksys. all i had to do was configure the wep key and viola. then, to install php, mysql, apache, etc. ap-get install whatever or use synaptic. holy freakin cow!!! i installed ubuntu and kubuntu, so i have latest gnome AND kde. how does ubuntu get it so right? i will never use another distro again.
they do (did?) for ipods. you could get an ipod customized with a engraving on the back. but i guess that's kind of dumb really as most ipods sit in a case or something. but they did at one time. it was like a $20 add on feature. I guess you have to have a metal case for a laptop which is seldom the case except for the PB's. every other laptop, dell, gateway, et al., all have plastic.
my G3 700Mhz iBook w/640MB runs tiger great as well. in fact, it runs hardly worse than my wife's 1.5 512mb mini does. the only problem, as with all notebooks is hard drive speed. the G3 runs photoshop, dreamweaver, et al. great, it just takes a little longer for the programs to load. I also teach AP comp sci and java runs great on the G3. even netbeans runs well. I honestly wonder how much a difference there is between the G4's and the G3's. I'm sure the altivec helps some apps, but I can tell nary a difference between my G4 ibook and the G3 ibook. but of course i'm not rendering a 20mb image.
I think you're right. However, I have never figured out where the boundaries are. For example, if a student walks home from school we're still technically responsible. However, if said student stops and throws a rock through a store's window, we're not liable. Or, if instead of heading home, he decides to go to the mall and three hours later is kidnapped, we're again not a responsible party. There's alot of gray area.
IANAL, yada yada, but IAAT ( I am a teacher), and it is my understanding that once we give the student over to the parent/guardian, we're free. for example, if a student has to leave early for a doctor appt., once the parent has signed them out, we transfer supervision.
whoa there, you mean to tell me that the government isn't the most efficient, cost-effective, and productive supplier of goods and services. well, I'm gonna have to rethink a few things!!
apple is a true technology company. they spend a great deal on R&D. I don't remember exactly the numbers, but I read where dell invests the least amount of any "tech" company into R&D. infact, dell is a glorified white-box dealer. they simply assemble and repackage other peoples' technology. dell might be today's IBM (nobody ever got fired for...), but that could change. they are far too dependent on others. apple, while needing chips, etc., still innovates. dell, what? that wretchid mp3 player?
I'm a public school teacher (history, econ, comp sci) and a blogger (conservative) and I see a huge similarity between the old media and the blogoshpere and the medieval church and the renaissance/reformation. The old media is like the church, the guardians of the truth, while the new media (bloggers) are little old Copernicus publishing his ideas. Blogger, et al. are in many ways the new printing press.
For example, the NY Times, the high priest of the church, has come under withering attacks from the blogosphere for continued bias and outright falsehoods. USA Today just got caught doctoring a photo of Condi Rice. The liberal bloggers are critical of Fox and others, but those most afraid of the blgos are the old media. Rather was caught by right-of-center Little Green Footballs and Powerline in a blatant attempt to pass forgeries. The NY Times was caught in numerous lies. AP was caught getting inside info from terrorists about where bombs were going to go off.
But whatever a blogger's political persuasion, they have stolen, for want of a better word, the power of the old media to control what we see, when we see it, how we see it, or worse, if we see it at all. That's the real problem. I don't expect anything less of old media. (It's also why Microsoft fights open source so fiercely. Loss of power and control.)
Blogs are tantamount to posting 95 theses for the whole world to see.
i've always had one complaint, that the whole thing loads on startup. why can't they separate the components? i know it is a petty thing to ask for, but it would reduce the startup times alot, plus, how many times do you need every tool? if MS did anything right, it was to load only what's essential, then load everything else later. yeah, they preload alot of libraries, and most users don't know it, but word starts quick even on a P2 or P3. OO.org is a dog compared to it. since what was it, 5.2, they got rid of the desktop thingy which was a joke. i like abiword because it loads fast. i also have used pages and it rocks.
perhaps I exaggerated. it is possible the times ran a story on the building of new schools. as for drawing conclusions, yes, I do read the times, and yes, am quite familiar with their shoddy reporting on the war. so if my conclusions, that they want us to lose in Iraq and that they want to destroy a president, for example, seem a little harsh, fine. but they are based on much reading of the paper. you might disagree with my conclusions, but I think it is far more than fair to say the times has been the best friend of our enemies. If you'd like to see a long list of disgusting propagandizing masked as journalism, read Tom MacGuire's blog. he dissects the times.
I'm quite balanced by the way. I do get angry becuase our efforts both in Iraq and Afghanistan are so maligned so easily by so many in the press. Imagine today's press in 1943? If you are a WW2 history buff, as I am, you'd know we'd have never won the war with Rather, Jennings, Brokaw, CNN, etc al. I get angry when people around here rail against the US when they haven't a clue about the last several years, or last several centuries. I think it's fair. It's so easy to hate the US, but the first moment something bad happens, a tsunami, etc., they all run and cry for US help. We're the greatest threat to the world, yet somehow we're the ulimate source of relief. Hmmm...how ironic, that the UN, which can boast of Srebenica, Darfur, and the Congo is the model, while the US, who has spent the last decade and a half saving Muslims in Kosovo, Indonesia, Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan, is seen as the enemy. I guess, since I'm a teacher, ignorance and stupidity makes me angry.
there are entire web sites dedicated to uncovering the lies and distortions of the ny times. I don't watch fox news, or much tv news for that matter. In fact, what fox has done has turned "news" into two people yelling at each other. Every story has someone who shills for and someone who rails against. that's not news, it's entertainment. however, that being said, the ny times front page only highlights what it wants. for example, it ran abu ghraib stories for two months strait, when there was nothing more new to report.
here's an example from the LA Times. the ombudsman was critical of they way they portrayed the abortion debate. anyone in favor was "pro-choice", opposed "anti-choice". the editor wen public chastising the paper to be more fair and evenhanded. that's bias as news. now, let's examine the war. does the ny times ever report a single positive development? never. not one school being built, nothing. afghanistan has vanished as it is so successful despite their faulty reporting. remember the winter, when we were "bogged down"? well, that sure turned out wrong, eh? the ny times is egregious. their circulation is down, they are turning to subscriptions. okrent ripped krugman for basicalyl lying.
lies? how about jayson blair? I could go on. but the ny times is not being novel. no, cronkite proved the rpess could get away with lying. the blogs have now caught them.
the difference is they didn't cloak the story as a news item, but rather, made it clear it was opinion. unlike, say, the ny times which mixes the op-ed and the front page at will.
I used WebCT last year for an online class. I really didn't like it. Perhaps it is because I have been doing web development for years, I found the whole interface and page creation process totally distracting and useless. I also didn't like its test and quiz creation features. My district was part of a statewide testing program and we have settled on WebCT but I'd rather give teachers a choice or some more freedom. WebCT forced things to be a certain way far too much for my tastes. I imagine for someone with no experience designing web pages, then maybe it'll be helpful. But, it's just too confusing to create links, topics, etc. Overall I'd give it a C-. But then again, I was a little jaded. Also, the kids didn't like it too much either. They had trouble with some of the features and it was confusig for them.
It does matter perhaps what IDE, language, etc. one uses. For instance, wold one use Visual Studio to learn C++ or use Visual Basic? No. But perhaps have them use emacs and develop in C, python, etc. There's a big difference. Should they use a free toolkit or proprietary, be concerned with cross-platform issues, etc. I teach the AP Comp Sci class and I use jedit for the editor. But I also use examples from python and C for comparison. I think you cold have an OSS class that focuses on OSS technologies like developing linux drivers or applications. They can modify the kernel, write a module, whatever. Probably alot easier when you have the code. But what do I know, I can barely compile a kernel, I just rpm -ivh....
I always stress good programming first, even though it's not part fo the AP exam. However, there is some debate in the OSS community about java, which I won't get into. But, we are going to be offering an in tro programming class hoepfully next year, and we will not use anything proprietary both from a financial as well as ideoogical position. It's a helluva lot easier to sell a class that costs technically nothing. I'll probably use emacs and python mostly (OO design, both are cross platform) and mix in dynamic html, javascript, and php. That will be my prereq for the AP class of which right now there is none.
Slashdot Mirror
yes, the T34 was far far superior to the Sherman. however, by 1945, tanks without air cover were targets. we would have controlled the skies absolutely. the russians had nothing to contend with the heavy bomber forces. we'd have been able to interrupt their supply lines and destroy their armies in the field. no, it wouldn't have been pretty, and no it wouldn't have been easy, but rather tahn stopping at moscow, we could very well have chosen the middle ground, as I said in the orig post, make them go back to 1939 borders. it's a whole different world then. i do think that we were aware of what it would mean to go to moscow, and it would make our efforts in Iraq look like a cake walk. i think the general consensus of the anti-communists was to get them out of europe proper. that was doable, and probably necessary. but hell, we survived, eh?
you are correct. the world was dramatically reshaped after ww1, however, it was basically realigned after ww2. much of the world's problems today date from versailles. we never dealt with ethnic nationalism and we basically created pan-arabism. while we dealt with militaristic imperialism, we reverted back to a 19th century model of realpolitik and balance of power. we supported thug dictators so longs they fought communism and we sought alliances such as NATO and SEATO.
funny, as we try to change the calculus of the last 50 years, we're being criticized. it's as if we had a century of peace or something.
not surprised you got modded flamebait. truth is, that yeah, there were many in the gov't and military that wanted to keep on going east. ans yes, we should have. in fact, one of the reasons many german generals surrendered to us so fast (such as the German army in the Ruhr and the Rhineland) was that they full well expected us to fight the Soviets. Not going to Berlin was purely a political decision. In fact, there were many political decisions, such as not giving Patton the resources he needed and diverting them to Monty (that useless piece of ...). We could have, and very well should have demanded that the Russians head back to the 1939 boundaries (you know, pre non-aggression pact) which would have gotten them out of Poland, et al. Of all the things that came out of Versailles in 1919, people forget that one of the major concerns of the allies was to prevent what Trotsky called "the red bridge to Europe" which he considered Germany. That is the reason they created Poland, Czechoslovakia, etc., after WW1, to prevent the spread of bolshevism. Besides punishing Germany, which was priority #1 (and 2, 3, 4, and 5 !!!), the fear of bolshevism was a lingering concern. In fact, Poland defeated Russia in a war in 1921 to stop that very thing. There was a precedent for concern over soviet expansion and it should have been dealt with then. Had the soviets been isolated, we could have contained them much better, not had to spend trillions to defend europe, and could have weakened the commies tremendously. but you are entirely right, there was little diffrence between the soviets and the nazis, save for the fact that the communists had penetratedhigh into the government here and had lots of supporters in America. and yes, alger hiss was a spy.
I thought 3 was ??? 4 was profit.
i finally installed ubuntu this weekend. i had always been a mandrake fan, and also have used fedora some, but neither would recognize my belkin f5d6001 (admtek chipset) wireless pci card, or would configure it. also, couldn't get a linksys wusb11 (usb wifi) to work either. spare me the howto's. a modern distro should just do it. period. ubuntu did the belkin perfect, never tried the linksys. all i had to do was configure the wep key and viola. then, to install php, mysql, apache, etc. ap-get install whatever or use synaptic. holy freakin cow!!! i installed ubuntu and kubuntu, so i have latest gnome AND kde. how does ubuntu get it so right? i will never use another distro again.
that would explain the fear. "vee are open source. vee have vays of making you, um, compiling you, um, vee have vays...of...using your source."
I have a very high spec'd machine
you'll be able to run OpenOffice.org and get work done before you have to clock out.
they do (did?) for ipods. you could get an ipod customized with a engraving on the back. but i guess that's kind of dumb really as most ipods sit in a case or something. but they did at one time. it was like a $20 add on feature. I guess you have to have a metal case for a laptop which is seldom the case except for the PB's. every other laptop, dell, gateway, et al., all have plastic.
my G3 700Mhz iBook w/640MB runs tiger great as well. in fact, it runs hardly worse than my wife's 1.5 512mb mini does. the only problem, as with all notebooks is hard drive speed. the G3 runs photoshop, dreamweaver, et al. great, it just takes a little longer for the programs to load. I also teach AP comp sci and java runs great on the G3. even netbeans runs well. I honestly wonder how much a difference there is between the G4's and the G3's. I'm sure the altivec helps some apps, but I can tell nary a difference between my G4 ibook and the G3 ibook. but of course i'm not rendering a 20mb image.
I think you're right. However, I have never figured out where the boundaries are. For example, if a student walks home from school we're still technically responsible. However, if said student stops and throws a rock through a store's window, we're not liable. Or, if instead of heading home, he decides to go to the mall and three hours later is kidnapped, we're again not a responsible party. There's alot of gray area.
IANAL, yada yada, but IAAT ( I am a teacher), and it is my understanding that once we give the student over to the parent/guardian, we're free. for example, if a student has to leave early for a doctor appt., once the parent has signed them out, we transfer supervision.
whoa there, you mean to tell me that the government isn't the most efficient, cost-effective, and productive supplier of goods and services. well, I'm gonna have to rethink a few things!!
apple is a true technology company. they spend a great deal on R&D. I don't remember exactly the numbers, but I read where dell invests the least amount of any "tech" company into R&D. infact, dell is a glorified white-box dealer. they simply assemble and repackage other peoples' technology. dell might be today's IBM (nobody ever got fired for...), but that could change. they are far too dependent on others. apple, while needing chips, etc., still innovates. dell, what? that wretchid mp3 player?
I'm a public school teacher (history, econ, comp sci) and a blogger (conservative) and I see a huge similarity between the old media and the blogoshpere and the medieval church and the renaissance/reformation. The old media is like the church, the guardians of the truth, while the new media (bloggers) are little old Copernicus publishing his ideas. Blogger, et al. are in many ways the new printing press.
For example, the NY Times, the high priest of the church, has come under withering attacks from the blogosphere for continued bias and outright falsehoods. USA Today just got caught doctoring a photo of Condi Rice. The liberal bloggers are critical of Fox and others, but those most afraid of the blgos are the old media. Rather was caught by right-of-center Little Green Footballs and Powerline in a blatant attempt to pass forgeries. The NY Times was caught in numerous lies. AP was caught getting inside info from terrorists about where bombs were going to go off.
But whatever a blogger's political persuasion, they have stolen, for want of a better word, the power of the old media to control what we see, when we see it, how we see it, or worse, if we see it at all. That's the real problem. I don't expect anything less of old media. (It's also why Microsoft fights open source so fiercely. Loss of power and control.)
Blogs are tantamount to posting 95 theses for the whole world to see.
holy is to shit as , hell, nevermind...
i've always had one complaint, that the whole thing loads on startup. why can't they separate the components? i know it is a petty thing to ask for, but it would reduce the startup times alot, plus, how many times do you need every tool? if MS did anything right, it was to load only what's essential, then load everything else later. yeah, they preload alot of libraries, and most users don't know it, but word starts quick even on a P2 or P3. OO.org is a dog compared to it. since what was it, 5.2, they got rid of the desktop thingy which was a joke. i like abiword because it loads fast. i also have used pages and it rocks.
alright then:
<humor attempt="yes">
what, is this some SAT joke? Why don't we just say linux:desktop :: windows:servers
</humor>
How would a vi pro do CSV test processing?
with a perl script. written on vim of course!!
perhaps I exaggerated. it is possible the times ran a story on the building of new schools. as for drawing conclusions, yes, I do read the times, and yes, am quite familiar with their shoddy reporting on the war. so if my conclusions, that they want us to lose in Iraq and that they want to destroy a president, for example, seem a little harsh, fine. but they are based on much reading of the paper. you might disagree with my conclusions, but I think it is far more than fair to say the times has been the best friend of our enemies. If you'd like to see a long list of disgusting propagandizing masked as journalism, read Tom MacGuire's blog. he dissects the times.
I'm quite balanced by the way. I do get angry becuase our efforts both in Iraq and Afghanistan are so maligned so easily by so many in the press. Imagine today's press in 1943? If you are a WW2 history buff, as I am, you'd know we'd have never won the war with Rather, Jennings, Brokaw, CNN, etc al. I get angry when people around here rail against the US when they haven't a clue about the last several years, or last several centuries. I think it's fair. It's so easy to hate the US, but the first moment something bad happens, a tsunami, etc., they all run and cry for US help. We're the greatest threat to the world, yet somehow we're the ulimate source of relief. Hmmm...how ironic, that the UN, which can boast of Srebenica, Darfur, and the Congo is the model, while the US, who has spent the last decade and a half saving Muslims in Kosovo, Indonesia, Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan, is seen as the enemy. I guess, since I'm a teacher, ignorance and stupidity makes me angry.
there are entire web sites dedicated to uncovering the lies and distortions of the ny times. I don't watch fox news, or much tv news for that matter. In fact, what fox has done has turned "news" into two people yelling at each other. Every story has someone who shills for and someone who rails against. that's not news, it's entertainment. however, that being said, the ny times front page only highlights what it wants. for example, it ran abu ghraib stories for two months strait, when there was nothing more new to report.
here's an example from the LA Times. the ombudsman was critical of they way they portrayed the abortion debate. anyone in favor was "pro-choice", opposed "anti-choice". the editor wen public chastising the paper to be more fair and evenhanded. that's bias as news. now, let's examine the war. does the ny times ever report a single positive development? never. not one school being built, nothing. afghanistan has vanished as it is so successful despite their faulty reporting. remember the winter, when we were "bogged down"? well, that sure turned out wrong, eh? the ny times is egregious. their circulation is down, they are turning to subscriptions. okrent ripped krugman for basicalyl lying.
lies? how about jayson blair? I could go on. but the ny times is not being novel. no, cronkite proved the rpess could get away with lying. the blogs have now caught them.
the difference is they didn't cloak the story as a news item, but rather, made it clear it was opinion. unlike, say, the ny times which mixes the op-ed and the front page at will.
I used WebCT last year for an online class. I really didn't like it. Perhaps it is because I have been doing web development for years, I found the whole interface and page creation process totally distracting and useless. I also didn't like its test and quiz creation features. My district was part of a statewide testing program and we have settled on WebCT but I'd rather give teachers a choice or some more freedom. WebCT forced things to be a certain way far too much for my tastes. I imagine for someone with no experience designing web pages, then maybe it'll be helpful. But, it's just too confusing to create links, topics, etc. Overall I'd give it a C-. But then again, I was a little jaded. Also, the kids didn't like it too much either. They had trouble with some of the features and it was confusig for them.
It does matter perhaps what IDE, language, etc. one uses. For instance, wold one use Visual Studio to learn C++ or use Visual Basic? No. But perhaps have them use emacs and develop in C, python, etc. There's a big difference. Should they use a free toolkit or proprietary, be concerned with cross-platform issues, etc. I teach the AP Comp Sci class and I use jedit for the editor. But I also use examples from python and C for comparison. I think you cold have an OSS class that focuses on OSS technologies like developing linux drivers or applications. They can modify the kernel, write a module, whatever. Probably alot easier when you have the code. But what do I know, I can barely compile a kernel, I just rpm -ivh ....
I always stress good programming first, even though it's not part fo the AP exam. However, there is some debate in the OSS community about java, which I won't get into. But, we are going to be offering an in tro programming class hoepfully next year, and we will not use anything proprietary both from a financial as well as ideoogical position. It's a helluva lot easier to sell a class that costs technically nothing. I'll probably use emacs and python mostly (OO design, both are cross platform) and mix in dynamic html, javascript, and php. That will be my prereq for the AP class of which right now there is none.