What I was referring to was that there was no German military involvement at Pearl Harbour whatsoever. As for the U-boats in the Atlantic, the Americans at that point could have chosen to either retreat completely from the Atlantic (more plausible than it sounds) or they could have chosen to fight a solely naval war. There was no requirement for them to eventually devote infantry troops to the European front.
As for the Germans urging the Japanese to attack, that is true, but the decision was still up to the Japanese, and if they didn't want to do it, they wouldn't have.
Regarding Britain and France's decision to come to the aid of Poland, not only was it after Hitler had already been prancing about Europe for a while taking what he pleased and doing as he wanted without any intervention (concentration camps, Rhineland, Sudetenland, Czechoslovakia), but also, it was due to Britain and France's poor conduct (sour winners) after the World War I towards Germany that created the condition which allowed Hitler to gain power. Furthermore, the only reason they decided to intervene at that point was that they realized that Hitler would probably not be content expanding only in the east, and would probably eventually come after them, and it would be easier to fight him now than later when he would be much stronger. France and Britain were certainly not oblivious to the power shift that was occurring in Europe and which had to be stopped before it was too late (for their own sake).
I forgot to mention in my previous reply; Hitler didn't invent anti-Semitism. It preceded him by a huge amount of time, and the sad truth of the matter is if he didn't have expansionist tendencies, he could have pretty much done whatever he wanted to the Jewish population in Germany. The leadership of the US, the UK and France really didn't seem to mind it; it certainly wasn't the reason the UK and France declared war on Germany. Am I saying that his domestic policy was correct? Not at all, I think he was an idiot; all I'm saying is that he did what a fairly large number of people at that time were thinking about doing, and if Hitler hadn't come to power and done it, maybe some other idiot in some other country would have gotten the "brilliant" idea. Imagine if that country had been the US. The US had some nasty programs at the time including an
"eugenics" program and did a lot of unethical things, so you never know what would have developed over time if Hitler hadn't taken things to the extreme and inadvertently ended anti-Semitism.
Here in Berlin there used to be a large Jewish population. Now there isn't.
That is true, but while it might sound morbid, Jewish people actually benefited to a certain degree from Hitler's extreme anti-Semitism. Before World War 2, anti-Semitism was quite prevalent, not only in Germany, but also in the rest of the world. When Hitler took it to the extreme, he exhibited its true horror to the rest of the world, thereby mostly ridding the world of anti-Semitism; even those who still held anti-Semitic views could no longer express them for fear of being labelled Nazis. In addition, the state of Israel would most likely not have been created if not for the horror of the Holocaust (although whether the state of Israel did more good or harm for Jewish people is debatable, as it has sparked anti-Semitism in the Muslim world).
Well, while we're on the topic, it's interesting how Hitler's two primary goals had the opposite effect; he wanted to rid the world of Jewish people and Bolshevism, but instead ended up ridding most of the world of anti-Semitism and increasing the Soviet sphere of influence. The fall of Nazism also contributed to the fall of other fascist regimes and has to a certain degree prevented the rise of any other fascist regimes, since fascists are too closely associated with Nazis.
Communism, on the other hand, did nothing but create an unstable geopolitical situation, bring extreme poverty and lack of civil and political freedom to many people all over the world, and still Communism is not regarded with the same hatred as Nazism (many places still have Communist parties, some of which are still in power). Really, most of the current problems the Western World is encountering are mainly due to communism; the Soviets aligning themselves with certain Arabic nations against Israel, and the US aligning itself with Israel has lead to much anti-American sentiment in the region. Since the US was a much more open society than the Soviets, although granted not completely transparent, the media and the rest of the world got a much better view of the actions the US took during the Cold War to attempt the subjugation and containment of Communism, leading to a lot of anti-American Sentiment; meanwhile, Soviet society was much more closed, with no free press and as such, the rest of the world did not knowing what was happening within it, allowing the Soviets to speak about wanting peace, freedom, equality, disarmament, and that they were doing well economically and that everyone was happy, leading to a lot of pro-Soviet sentiment. Lest we forget the horror that was Vietnam, the CIA involvement in Afghanistan in response to Soviet aggression that came back to bite everyone in the ass, the Korean war, which was almost a success has the Chinese not marched all those people into Korea, as well as the current state of North Korea, the spawn of both the People's Republic of China and the Soviet Union which is now a serious threat to all the world. Well, this had turned out to be quite a rant, oh well.
Granted, my "If anything" statement was a bit of a hyperbole. It is debatable whether a successful Third Reich campaign leading to the Nazis controlling Europe would be better or worse than a successful Bolshevik campaign leading to the Soviets controlling Europe. One can argue that the economic might of the Third Reich would have fizzled out after the war and that the system would have been brought down from the inside faster than the Soviet Union (with Europe annexed). A successful Soviet Union would have certainly been a greater political threat to North America than a successful Third Reich would have been a military threat. Anyways, that is beside the point; the carnage to which I was referring to during my earlier post was primarily what was carried out by the advancing Red Army; the conduct of the Red Army was quite brutal and barbaric for something that was supposed to be hailed as a liberating army. As for the carnage after the Soviet hold on Eastern Europe had been solidified, I agree with you that it was neither obvious nor occurring in large quantities, and I never meant to imply otherwise. Of course, that was not how things were done in Eastern Europe; they key was the Secret Police, which would silently eliminate political dissidents and perpetuate a constant state of fear, combined with Soviet tanks, which would be deployed when the public dissent reached critical mass (which was not too often).
Finally, I would like to point out that the amount of raw death was not how I measured the damaged caused by the Soviets and their puppet regimes. There is certainly more than way to skin a cat, as they say. In Eastern Europe, this was done through the "Secret Police" as I stated above; people were systematically deprived of their political, civil, and economic freedoms, as well as any wealth or property that they had somehow managed to maintain. The population was kept in check by terror, and ruled with an iron fist, which I assure you is not something you want to experience first hand (and hopefully won't have to if the slide towards totalitarianism in the Western world is stopped). Furthermore, corruption, at all stages of life, became an accepted part of life, which to this day is still engrained in the minds as well as the economy and government of many Eastern Europeans. Also, a successful Third Reich would have been a smaller threat to North America than a successful Soviet Union, as I also pointed above. As for the damage done by each, as I pointed out in another one of my posts, the damage done by the Nazis has mostly dissipated, while the damage done by the Bolshevik Regime is still apparent, not only in Eastern Europe, but also Russia, and many other parts of the world (granted, Hitler didn't get a "fair chance" to show as what he could truly do). Any other method of comparing how much damage was or could be done by each party lies solely in the realm of the hypothetical. As for you living happily in East Germany, that is only because the Berlin Wall fell, the Iron Curtain was removed, the pro-Soviet regime was ousted, and the West Germans agreed to reunify.
1) The US was supporting the German, as well as the Brittish war effort. Many politicians were quite opposed to favoring Britain over Germany. For some reason we tend to forget them.
This is arguable. Of course some politicians were opposed to favouring Britain over Germany; multiple points of view and multiple opinions is one of the traits of a democratic (republic) system; those politicians, however, were not in the majority. The US government was certainly not officially supporting the German war effort.
2) Pearl Harbor was a Japanese event, but Japan had treaties with Germany such that if the US defended itself, it was automatically at war with Germany as well. I have also heard that Germany encouraged Japan in this attack, but I have no idea as to the truth of this claim.
Officially, America would have been at war with Germany, however, there was nothing forcing the Americans to fight on the Western European front. They could have just issued economic aid to the UK and Russians, while fighting only in the Pacific Theatre. Once they had defeated the Japanese, they could have just twiddled their thumbs while the Nazis took over Europe. The Nazis would not have dared attack America directly while they were still fighting on the Eastern, Western, and North African fronts, and even afterwards, they would have needed a large time to rebuild for an invasion of America; they would have probably been content with all of Europe and Russia, and would have probably started expanding in Asia instead.
3) Despite the treaties, many of the alignments were based on political alignments (similar to conservative/liberal) irrespective of which country you were in. Many considered Boleshivism to be the only threat that they would consider, and favored the Nazis because they were anti-bolshevik (currently say anti-communist). This included not only businessmen, but even cultural heros like Charles Lindbergh, who was also a US Representative from 1907->1917.
One could very easily favour the Brits on the Western and North African front, while favouring the Nazis on the Eastern front. As for the anti-Bolsheviks, most of them certainly didn't want the Third Reich engulfing all of Europe either.
I asked you for sources for your well-known facts:) Do you have any? Non-US that is, since the winner always writes bad history.
May I refer you to Google or your closest library? May I refer you to a trip to Eastern Europe, the Former Soviet Republics, and Russia? The reason I did not provide you with any links it twofold: I have no reason to waste my time proving something that is well-known, and even if I did provide you with reputable sources, you would dismiss them as lies spread by the "infidel imperialistic American dogs" or whatever you kids think is cool nowadays. I ask you, if someone told you that the world was flat, would you feel compelled to explain to him or her that it is not? You can easily prove that the world is flat through mathematics, but anyone who is willing to believe that the world if flat would dismiss mathematics as well. Alas, it is a futile effort.
The reason there ever was an Iron Curtain is because of the US "assistance" in rebuilding Western Europe.
Now this is clearly ridiculous. The Iron Curtain was clearly of Soviet devising; the Americans had nothing to do with it. The Soviets simply closed off those societies to the outside world. If the Americans had left Western Germany, the Iron Curtain would have simply been extended all around Europe; it would not have magically disappeared.
The US, of course, only assisted since it suited their own purposes - just like Iraq today.
Yes, as opposed to all those other countries who provide assistance just to hurt themselves? Of course the US followed their own interests, just like every other country follows their own interests; however, unlike the Soviets, the US realized that it was in their best interest if the whole world wasn't completely screwed up.
If the US hadn't stayed behind, you wouldn't have had a polarized Europe for so many years, and it's likely that the Soviet Union had been much different.
Of course Europe would not have been polarized without American assistance; instead, all of Europe would be under the Soviet sphere of influence. Can you truly look anyone in the eye and tell them that that would have been better? Instead of having 50% of Europe in complete and utter economic and political shambles, you would now have 100% of Europe in complete and utter economic and political shambles. As for the Soviet Union, it would have definitely been different: it would have been much larger and it would have been a much larger threat to the rest of the world.
Myself I'm Swedish. While I haven't lived on the Eastern side of the wall, I've lived close enough to know the "russian scare", and also to now know how much of the western anti-Communism that was propaganda rather than truth.
Funny how people who lived on the other side of the Iron Curtain always seem to be more fond of Communism that those that lived within it. The difference between the Russians and the Eastern Europeans was that while the Russians had gone from the horrible Czarist regime to the horrible Bolshevik regime, the Eastern Europeans were actually fairly prosperous, especially just before the onset of World War 2. As such, the Eastern Europeans had the ability to analyze both the prosperous pre-communist regime, and the post-communist regime, and they were not happy with what had happened; this was a luxury that neither the citizens of the Russia, nor those of China had, and as such, the citizens of Eastern Europe were much more malcontent with Communism. As for you "knowing" how much of the western anti-Communist propaganda was truth, you are sadly mistaken. You could not peer through the Iron Curtain; you knew no more than the rest of the world. I lived behind the Iron Curtain, and allow me to assure you that western anti-Communism propaganda was not that far off. Most
Well, Communism is responsible for over 200 million deaths worldwide, and a considerably larger number of people were subjected to horrible living conditions because of it (I myself was one of them). If Communism had propagated into Western Europe, there is no telling of what horrors might have ensued; it might have served as a launching pad into North America, and I suppose that would have been the end of it. As eerie and unlikely as that sound, there was actually a large possibility of it occurring; there were active Communist parties in both Western Europe and North America. The Nazis would have had a hard time taking over North America through military means, but the Commies could have done it much more easily from within. As for the damages actually done to Europe, while those done by the Nazis have mostly dissipated, those done by the Soviets remain apparent to this day.
By the way, I do not believe the Goodwin Law can be invoked in a conversation regarding World War II.:)
I hope you realize that Pearl Harbour was solely a Japanese affair with no German involvement whatsoever. If anything, the fact that the Americans chose to fight a war on two fronts, one of which was not a direct threat to them, instead of focusing solely on the Pacific Theatre does nothing but strengthen my point. Pearl Harbour did not involve the Americans in World War II, it merely brought them out of isolation; the events which followed were merely an extension of that.
I hope you are not implying that the US government was in any way supporting Germany's war effort. While it is true that American companies were originally supporting both the UK and Germany, that is through no fault of the Americans; it is merely a side effect of a free capitalist economy.
All the items presented in my post are well documented and accepted historical facts. Care to tell me which of the statements I made you do no believe to be accurate?
Furthermore, do you contest the fact that the Americans played a pivotal role in reconstructing Western Europe (including West Germany)? Do you truly believe that war-ravaged Western Europe could have been rebuilt so quickly without American assistance? Do you also contest the fact that while US-aided Western Europe & Germany were rising economically, Soviet-controlled Eastern Europe & Germany were declining rapidly?
Believe me, unlike yourself, I have lived under "communism" and would not wish the experience I have endured upon anyone else, not even yourself. I speak from well documented facts as well as first hand experience, whereas you appear to be hanging onto the every word of the Soviet propaganda machine of yore.
If you are malcontent with current US policy, then feel free to protest it, for the US, unlike the former Soviet allows political dissent; just do not belittle the contributions of the United States. In all the history of mankind, no nation with so much power has shown so much self-restraint, and whether you wish to admit it or not, Western Civilization would not be were it is today if it were not for the Americans.
I would like to add that I was neither born in, nor am I a citizen of the United States of America. In fact, as I have had the pleasure (and displeasure) of living on both sides of the Iron Curtain, I contest that I am a much more impartial, as well as a much better informed observer than yourself.
The Russians didn't want to get involved in the war. The Russians didn't care about the wellbeing of Europe in the least. Hitler and Stalin had a non-aggression pact, which was broken by Hitler, at which point Stalin had a nervous breakdown. The Russians were more than happy to carve up Europe with the Nazis, but Hitler wouldn't have it; he kind of saw it as his life's mission to get rid of the "Bolsheviks." The Russians only got into the war because the Germans attacked them. The Americans were not in a direct threat from the Germans, unlike the Soviets, and could have easily not gotten involved in the war, unlike the Soviets. The Russians were forced into the war against their will, whereas the Americans were there voluntarily.
The Russians would have crumbled without the money and equipment given to them by the Americans. If it wasn't for the Americans, not only would Hitler have owned Europe, but he would have also owned Russia. Furthermore, the Russian soldiers did not want to fight in the least. Behind every Russian soldier, there was a man with a gun making sure that the soldier would advance; if not, the soldier was shot. Contrast this with the Americans, who although they were conscripted, were willing to advance on their own accord. Most Americans willingly risked and sacrificed their lives for a cause in which they believed, unlike the Russians, who sacrificed their lives because they had no choice. As for the massive losses the Russians suffered, this was not because they were somehow extremely devoted to the liberation of Europe, it was because of their own incompetence and shitty war machine (even after the Americans pumped them full of money and equipment).
Finally, let's look at how the Soviets handled the end of the war. While they were advancing, the Russian army conducted themselves in a manner not fit for even the most disorganized army and committed many atrocities. They occupied and imposed "friendly" regimes in all the countries through which they steamrolled on their way to Germany. Contrast this with the Americans, who remained in Western Germany to insure that the Russians stayed on their damn side of Germany.
If anything, the Russians did more harm to Europe than the Nazis could have ever done. Just ask any of the inhabitants of the Eastern European countries, or the East Germans. People weren't risking their lives to get into West Berlin just for the fun of it you know. This is all the stuff that happened at the end of the war, and doesn't even take into account all the shit that the Russians pulled afterwards.
Re:64-benchmarks wont be good
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AMD64 Preview
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· Score: 5, Informative
How the frell did this get modded up? Please RTFA before commenting/modding.
The benchmark was against a P4 (as well as a dual Xeon), which runs IA-32 natively, not the Italium.
The A64 is a consumer chip, designed to be purchased and used by consumers. The Itanium processor costs more than a whole top of the line consumer computer. The A64 and the Italium are not targeted at the same market segment and neither is the Opteron, which is supposed to go up against the Xeon.
The reason everyone is looking forward to a benchmark of an A64 running a native 64-bit application on a 64-bit OS is that not only is X86-64 considerably cleaner than IA-32, but the A64 also has two times as many SSE2 and General Purpose registers, which should yield significantly better results than the A64 running in 32-bit mode (which is already outperforming the P4 in a lot of benchmarks).
By the way, before someone points out that the benchmarked processor is an overclocked Opteron and not an A64, AMD is currently planning on releasing a version of the A64 which is just a rebranded Opteron 1xx along with the single-channel version of the A64.
Battlefield 1942 is a Direct3D game; OpenGL drivers won't really help. Till game developers drop Direct3D completely, which I don't foresee happening in the near future, Linux (& Mac) gamers will always be missing a few titles.
They should have also benchmarked the latest 3Dlabs cards in order to give us a proper frame of reference. For all we know, both these cards could be providing inferior performance compared to the latest Wildcat; good gaming performance doesn't necessarily translate into a good professional video card.
The Wildcats are also cheaper: $899 for the 512 MB VP990 Pro and $499 for the 256 MB VP880 Pro or the 128 MB VP970 (from the 3Dlabs eStore) compared to $530 for the cheapest 128 MB ATi FireGL X1 and $1250 for the cheapest 128 MB nVidia Quadro FX 2000 (the 256 MB variant was used for benchmarking).
Anyways, these aren't even ATi's and nVidia's top of the line cards; ATi's is the FireGL X2-256 and nVidia's is the Quadro FX 3000.
Actually, since in the article they mentioned that the Big Bang occured 14 billion years ago, they are using "U.S. Billions" (10^9) and not "U.K. Billions" (10^12). That means that they predict the Sun will engulf Earth in 5*10^9 years (5 "U.S. Billion" Years).
might be seen when AMD finally launches the Athlon64. Compiling everything to x86-64, and thereby increasing the numbers of registers substantially, as well as migrating to a slightly cleaner ISA (sorry x86-32 lovers) should render better results than attempting to optimize for a Celeron (ewww!).
On a less serious note, the server seems to be having a little bit for trouble; maybe they attempted to install Gentoo on their server (j/k).
Why not link to the actual comic instead of writing out the text of the comic and then providing a link to the comic's index page? Here's the comic in all its visual splendor.
You're correct; I read the article a while back and didn't reread it carefully enough when writing my comment. Anyways, the units aren't that important, and my point still stands.
Per capita, Estonians are currently spending more time (67 hours/year/capita) playing first person shooters online than Canadians (57 hours/year/capita). They're almost matching South Korea (70 hours/year/capita). By the way, the US comes in with 109 hours/year/capita.
This is quite a feat for a former Soviet republic.
Whhaaa?
It was called Total Information Awareness until recently, and this is what their website used to look like. When did they rename it?
Bah, just more newspeak...
Slashdot Mirror
What I was referring to was that there was no German military involvement at Pearl Harbour whatsoever. As for the U-boats in the Atlantic, the Americans at that point could have chosen to either retreat completely from the Atlantic (more plausible than it sounds) or they could have chosen to fight a solely naval war. There was no requirement for them to eventually devote infantry troops to the European front.
As for the Germans urging the Japanese to attack, that is true, but the decision was still up to the Japanese, and if they didn't want to do it, they wouldn't have.
Regarding Britain and France's decision to come to the aid of Poland, not only was it after Hitler had already been prancing about Europe for a while taking what he pleased and doing as he wanted without any intervention (concentration camps, Rhineland, Sudetenland, Czechoslovakia), but also, it was due to Britain and France's poor conduct (sour winners) after the World War I towards Germany that created the condition which allowed Hitler to gain power. Furthermore, the only reason they decided to intervene at that point was that they realized that Hitler would probably not be content expanding only in the east, and would probably eventually come after them, and it would be easier to fight him now than later when he would be much stronger. France and Britain were certainly not oblivious to the power shift that was occurring in Europe and which had to be stopped before it was too late (for their own sake).
I forgot to mention in my previous reply; Hitler didn't invent anti-Semitism. It preceded him by a huge amount of time, and the sad truth of the matter is if he didn't have expansionist tendencies, he could have pretty much done whatever he wanted to the Jewish population in Germany. The leadership of the US, the UK and France really didn't seem to mind it; it certainly wasn't the reason the UK and France declared war on Germany. Am I saying that his domestic policy was correct? Not at all, I think he was an idiot; all I'm saying is that he did what a fairly large number of people at that time were thinking about doing, and if Hitler hadn't come to power and done it, maybe some other idiot in some other country would have gotten the "brilliant" idea. Imagine if that country had been the US. The US had some nasty programs at the time including an "eugenics" program and did a lot of unethical things, so you never know what would have developed over time if Hitler hadn't taken things to the extreme and inadvertently ended anti-Semitism.
Well, while we're on the topic, it's interesting how Hitler's two primary goals had the opposite effect; he wanted to rid the world of Jewish people and Bolshevism, but instead ended up ridding most of the world of anti-Semitism and increasing the Soviet sphere of influence. The fall of Nazism also contributed to the fall of other fascist regimes and has to a certain degree prevented the rise of any other fascist regimes, since fascists are too closely associated with Nazis.
Communism, on the other hand, did nothing but create an unstable geopolitical situation, bring extreme poverty and lack of civil and political freedom to many people all over the world, and still Communism is not regarded with the same hatred as Nazism (many places still have Communist parties, some of which are still in power). Really, most of the current problems the Western World is encountering are mainly due to communism; the Soviets aligning themselves with certain Arabic nations against Israel, and the US aligning itself with Israel has lead to much anti-American sentiment in the region. Since the US was a much more open society than the Soviets, although granted not completely transparent, the media and the rest of the world got a much better view of the actions the US took during the Cold War to attempt the subjugation and containment of Communism, leading to a lot of anti-American Sentiment; meanwhile, Soviet society was much more closed, with no free press and as such, the rest of the world did not knowing what was happening within it, allowing the Soviets to speak about wanting peace, freedom, equality, disarmament, and that they were doing well economically and that everyone was happy, leading to a lot of pro-Soviet sentiment. Lest we forget the horror that was Vietnam, the CIA involvement in Afghanistan in response to Soviet aggression that came back to bite everyone in the ass, the Korean war, which was almost a success has the Chinese not marched all those people into Korea, as well as the current state of North Korea, the spawn of both the People's Republic of China and the Soviet Union which is now a serious threat to all the world. Well, this had turned out to be quite a rant, oh well.
Granted, my "If anything" statement was a bit of a hyperbole. It is debatable whether a successful Third Reich campaign leading to the Nazis controlling Europe would be better or worse than a successful Bolshevik campaign leading to the Soviets controlling Europe. One can argue that the economic might of the Third Reich would have fizzled out after the war and that the system would have been brought down from the inside faster than the Soviet Union (with Europe annexed). A successful Soviet Union would have certainly been a greater political threat to North America than a successful Third Reich would have been a military threat. Anyways, that is beside the point; the carnage to which I was referring to during my earlier post was primarily what was carried out by the advancing Red Army; the conduct of the Red Army was quite brutal and barbaric for something that was supposed to be hailed as a liberating army. As for the carnage after the Soviet hold on Eastern Europe had been solidified, I agree with you that it was neither obvious nor occurring in large quantities, and I never meant to imply otherwise. Of course, that was not how things were done in Eastern Europe; they key was the Secret Police, which would silently eliminate political dissidents and perpetuate a constant state of fear, combined with Soviet tanks, which would be deployed when the public dissent reached critical mass (which was not too often).
Finally, I would like to point out that the amount of raw death was not how I measured the damaged caused by the Soviets and their puppet regimes. There is certainly more than way to skin a cat, as they say. In Eastern Europe, this was done through the "Secret Police" as I stated above; people were systematically deprived of their political, civil, and economic freedoms, as well as any wealth or property that they had somehow managed to maintain. The population was kept in check by terror, and ruled with an iron fist, which I assure you is not something you want to experience first hand (and hopefully won't have to if the slide towards totalitarianism in the Western world is stopped). Furthermore, corruption, at all stages of life, became an accepted part of life, which to this day is still engrained in the minds as well as the economy and government of many Eastern Europeans. Also, a successful Third Reich would have been a smaller threat to North America than a successful Soviet Union, as I also pointed above. As for the damage done by each, as I pointed out in another one of my posts, the damage done by the Nazis has mostly dissipated, while the damage done by the Bolshevik Regime is still apparent, not only in Eastern Europe, but also Russia, and many other parts of the world (granted, Hitler didn't get a "fair chance" to show as what he could truly do). Any other method of comparing how much damage was or could be done by each party lies solely in the realm of the hypothetical. As for you living happily in East Germany, that is only because the Berlin Wall fell, the Iron Curtain was removed, the pro-Soviet regime was ousted, and the West Germans agreed to reunify.
May I refer you to Google or your closest library? May I refer you to a trip to Eastern Europe, the Former Soviet Republics, and Russia? The reason I did not provide you with any links it twofold: I have no reason to waste my time proving something that is well-known, and even if I did provide you with reputable sources, you would dismiss them as lies spread by the "infidel imperialistic American dogs" or whatever you kids think is cool nowadays. I ask you, if someone told you that the world was flat, would you feel compelled to explain to him or her that it is not? You can easily prove that the world is flat through mathematics, but anyone who is willing to believe that the world if flat would dismiss mathematics as well. Alas, it is a futile effort.
Now this is clearly ridiculous. The Iron Curtain was clearly of Soviet devising; the Americans had nothing to do with it. The Soviets simply closed off those societies to the outside world. If the Americans had left Western Germany, the Iron Curtain would have simply been extended all around Europe; it would not have magically disappeared.
Yes, as opposed to all those other countries who provide assistance just to hurt themselves? Of course the US followed their own interests, just like every other country follows their own interests; however, unlike the Soviets, the US realized that it was in their best interest if the whole world wasn't completely screwed up.
Of course Europe would not have been polarized without American assistance; instead, all of Europe would be under the Soviet sphere of influence. Can you truly look anyone in the eye and tell them that that would have been better? Instead of having 50% of Europe in complete and utter economic and political shambles, you would now have 100% of Europe in complete and utter economic and political shambles. As for the Soviet Union, it would have definitely been different: it would have been much larger and it would have been a much larger threat to the rest of the world.
Funny how people who lived on the other side of the Iron Curtain always seem to be more fond of Communism that those that lived within it. The difference between the Russians and the Eastern Europeans was that while the Russians had gone from the horrible Czarist regime to the horrible Bolshevik regime, the Eastern Europeans were actually fairly prosperous, especially just before the onset of World War 2. As such, the Eastern Europeans had the ability to analyze both the prosperous pre-communist regime, and the post-communist regime, and they were not happy with what had happened; this was a luxury that neither the citizens of the Russia, nor those of China had, and as such, the citizens of Eastern Europe were much more malcontent with Communism. As for you "knowing" how much of the western anti-Communist propaganda was truth, you are sadly mistaken. You could not peer through the Iron Curtain; you knew no more than the rest of the world. I lived behind the Iron Curtain, and allow me to assure you that western anti-Communism propaganda was not that far off. Most
Well, Communism is responsible for over 200 million deaths worldwide, and a considerably larger number of people were subjected to horrible living conditions because of it (I myself was one of them). If Communism had propagated into Western Europe, there is no telling of what horrors might have ensued; it might have served as a launching pad into North America, and I suppose that would have been the end of it. As eerie and unlikely as that sound, there was actually a large possibility of it occurring; there were active Communist parties in both Western Europe and North America. The Nazis would have had a hard time taking over North America through military means, but the Commies could have done it much more easily from within. As for the damages actually done to Europe, while those done by the Nazis have mostly dissipated, those done by the Soviets remain apparent to this day.
:)
By the way, I do not believe the Goodwin Law can be invoked in a conversation regarding World War II.
I hope you realize that Pearl Harbour was solely a Japanese affair with no German involvement whatsoever. If anything, the fact that the Americans chose to fight a war on two fronts, one of which was not a direct threat to them, instead of focusing solely on the Pacific Theatre does nothing but strengthen my point. Pearl Harbour did not involve the Americans in World War II, it merely brought them out of isolation; the events which followed were merely an extension of that.
I hope you are not implying that the US government was in any way supporting Germany's war effort. While it is true that American companies were originally supporting both the UK and Germany, that is through no fault of the Americans; it is merely a side effect of a free capitalist economy.
All the items presented in my post are well documented and accepted historical facts. Care to tell me which of the statements I made you do no believe to be accurate?
Furthermore, do you contest the fact that the Americans played a pivotal role in reconstructing Western Europe (including West Germany)? Do you truly believe that war-ravaged Western Europe could have been rebuilt so quickly without American assistance? Do you also contest the fact that while US-aided Western Europe & Germany were rising economically, Soviet-controlled Eastern Europe & Germany were declining rapidly?
Believe me, unlike yourself, I have lived under "communism" and would not wish the experience I have endured upon anyone else, not even yourself. I speak from well documented facts as well as first hand experience, whereas you appear to be hanging onto the every word of the Soviet propaganda machine of yore.
If you are malcontent with current US policy, then feel free to protest it, for the US, unlike the former Soviet allows political dissent; just do not belittle the contributions of the United States. In all the history of mankind, no nation with so much power has shown so much self-restraint, and whether you wish to admit it or not, Western Civilization would not be were it is today if it were not for the Americans.
I would like to add that I was neither born in, nor am I a citizen of the United States of America. In fact, as I have had the pleasure (and displeasure) of living on both sides of the Iron Curtain, I contest that I am a much more impartial, as well as a much better informed observer than yourself.
The Russians didn't want to get involved in the war. The Russians didn't care about the wellbeing of Europe in the least. Hitler and Stalin had a non-aggression pact, which was broken by Hitler, at which point Stalin had a nervous breakdown. The Russians were more than happy to carve up Europe with the Nazis, but Hitler wouldn't have it; he kind of saw it as his life's mission to get rid of the "Bolsheviks." The Russians only got into the war because the Germans attacked them. The Americans were not in a direct threat from the Germans, unlike the Soviets, and could have easily not gotten involved in the war, unlike the Soviets. The Russians were forced into the war against their will, whereas the Americans were there voluntarily.
The Russians would have crumbled without the money and equipment given to them by the Americans. If it wasn't for the Americans, not only would Hitler have owned Europe, but he would have also owned Russia. Furthermore, the Russian soldiers did not want to fight in the least. Behind every Russian soldier, there was a man with a gun making sure that the soldier would advance; if not, the soldier was shot. Contrast this with the Americans, who although they were conscripted, were willing to advance on their own accord. Most Americans willingly risked and sacrificed their lives for a cause in which they believed, unlike the Russians, who sacrificed their lives because they had no choice. As for the massive losses the Russians suffered, this was not because they were somehow extremely devoted to the liberation of Europe, it was because of their own incompetence and shitty war machine (even after the Americans pumped them full of money and equipment).
Finally, let's look at how the Soviets handled the end of the war. While they were advancing, the Russian army conducted themselves in a manner not fit for even the most disorganized army and committed many atrocities. They occupied and imposed "friendly" regimes in all the countries through which they steamrolled on their way to Germany. Contrast this with the Americans, who remained in Western Germany to insure that the Russians stayed on their damn side of Germany.
If anything, the Russians did more harm to Europe than the Nazis could have ever done. Just ask any of the inhabitants of the Eastern European countries, or the East Germans. People weren't risking their lives to get into West Berlin just for the fun of it you know. This is all the stuff that happened at the end of the war, and doesn't even take into account all the shit that the Russians pulled afterwards.
HL1 engine (heavily-modified Quake1 engine): OpenGL and Direct3D
HL2 engine (written from the ground up): Direct3D
from the to-stupid-for-words dept.
Right...
How the frell did this get modded up? Please RTFA before commenting/modding.
The benchmark was against a P4 (as well as a dual Xeon), which runs IA-32 natively, not the Italium.
The A64 is a consumer chip, designed to be purchased and used by consumers. The Itanium processor costs more than a whole top of the line consumer computer. The A64 and the Italium are not targeted at the same market segment and neither is the Opteron, which is supposed to go up against the Xeon.
The reason everyone is looking forward to a benchmark of an A64 running a native 64-bit application on a 64-bit OS is that not only is X86-64 considerably cleaner than IA-32, but the A64 also has two times as many SSE2 and General Purpose registers, which should yield significantly better results than the A64 running in 32-bit mode (which is already outperforming the P4 in a lot of benchmarks).
By the way, before someone points out that the benchmarked processor is an overclocked Opteron and not an A64, AMD is currently planning on releasing a version of the A64 which is just a rebranded Opteron 1xx along with the single-channel version of the A64.
Battlefield 1942 is a Direct3D game; OpenGL drivers won't really help. Till game developers drop Direct3D completely, which I don't foresee happening in the near future, Linux (& Mac) gamers will always be missing a few titles.
They should have also benchmarked the latest 3Dlabs cards in order to give us a proper frame of reference. For all we know, both these cards could be providing inferior performance compared to the latest Wildcat; good gaming performance doesn't necessarily translate into a good professional video card.
The Wildcats are also cheaper: $899 for the 512 MB VP990 Pro and $499 for the 256 MB VP880 Pro or the 128 MB VP970 (from the 3Dlabs eStore) compared to $530 for the cheapest 128 MB ATi FireGL X1 and $1250 for the cheapest 128 MB nVidia Quadro FX 2000 (the 256 MB variant was used for benchmarking).
Anyways, these aren't even ATi's and nVidia's top of the line cards; ATi's is the FireGL X2-256 and nVidia's is the Quadro FX 3000.
Actually, since in the article they mentioned that the Big Bang occured 14 billion years ago, they are using "U.S. Billions" (10^9) and not "U.K. Billions" (10^12). That means that they predict the Sun will engulf Earth in 5*10^9 years (5 "U.S. Billion" Years).
Billion:
1. The cardinal number equal to 10^9.
2. Chiefly British. The cardinal number equal to 10^12.
might be seen when AMD finally launches the Athlon64. Compiling everything to x86-64, and thereby increasing the numbers of registers substantially, as well as migrating to a slightly cleaner ISA (sorry x86-32 lovers) should render better results than attempting to optimize for a Celeron (ewww!).
On a less serious note, the server seems to be having a little bit for trouble; maybe they attempted to install Gentoo on their server (j/k).
Why not link to the actual comic instead of writing out the text of the comic and then providing a link to the comic's index page? Here's the comic in all its visual splendor.
Here's the direct RealPlayer link.
You're correct; I read the article a while back and didn't reread it carefully enough when writing my comment. Anyways, the units aren't that important, and my point still stands.
Per capita, Estonians are currently spending more time (67 hours/year/capita) playing first person shooters online than Canadians (57 hours/year/capita). They're almost matching South Korea (70 hours/year/capita). By the way, the US comes in with 109 hours/year/capita.
This is quite a feat for a former Soviet republic.
Full Article
TIA (Terrorist Information Awareness)
Whhaaa?
It was called Total Information Awareness until recently, and this is what their website used to look like. When did they rename it?
Bah, just more newspeak...