Considering those two probes were on the searing surface of Venus, the "little" amount of data sent is more of an accomplishment than a failure.
Venus? I was talking specifically about Mars landers, ie. those that were meant to land on Mars, not Venus:). The two probes I was referring to were Mars 6 and Mars 7.
I haven't noticed any more anti-US comments then pro-US, myself. Perhaps USians notice the criticism leveled against the US more than the criticism leveled at other countries?
Personally, I think the US has done quite well so far at getting mars landers to the surface. Here's the tally so far:
The US: 4/5 landers succeeded. Yay! The USSR: 3/7 landers succeeded, though 2 of those that reached the surface sent back little data. Britain: 0/1. Oh well, better luck next time:)
Of course, the budgets for the projects differed vastly. Beagle was a lightweight, and nearly, nearly, made it. Oh well, Mars has eaten more expensive probes before.
General Relativity predicts the existance of singularities. Just because they deal with infinities doesn't mean they don't exist. Quantum theory obviously does have a problem with infinite points, but then Quantum theory doesn't play nice with Relativity anyway. The two theories are currently incompatable with one another.
Science is a type of belief system. Man I hate the dumbasses in the world that forget this. Why would science not be a belief system. What makes it special nothing.
Actually, the scientific method is almost the opposite to belief. Belief is about accepting something as true. Science is about proving things false beyond reasonable doubt. A theory isn't scientific if it cannot be proved wrong.
You do realise that a scientific law isn't something set in stone, but rather an observed trend? Indeed, Newtons Law of Gravity is only an approximation.
Besides which, as far as I'm aware, there has been no occassion when the entropy of the Universe has been observed to decrease. Humans may tidy up and make things, but the entropy they add to the Universe, usually through waste heat, is greater than the amount of order they impose upon the Universe, often by several orders of magnitude.
In other words, the Second Law of Thermodymanics certainly doesn't imply the existance of a God.
As an aside, I believe the AC was pointing out that even if there were a God, what guarentee does one have that He's even interested in talking to us?
We applaud the hackers who so cleverly get around protections on technology. We had our "Free Kevin Mitnick" and "Free Dmitry" campaigns.
I thought the "Free Kevin Mitnick" campaign was about his imprisonment without trial for several years. I don't think anyone was debating that he should have been let off without any punishment, after all he did break the law. Just that denying him trial for several years isn't really something that's done in democracies.
Dmitry Sklyarov did something perfectly legal in his own country, and got arrested for it in the US. That wasn't an issue of freeing Dmitry just because he cleverly got around protections in technology, but because he did nothing illegal in the first place, and was still locked up.
So both those cases were singled out not due to anything clever on behalf of the hackers (in both senses of the word) involved, but because their human rights were infringed.
Here is a nice hack done for a good reason by the same law enforcement that is supposed to investigate and stop such crimes as extortion. And how do we react? Government spying! Conspiracy!
So the first campaigns you mention came to public attention because of obvious infrigement of rights. This latest FBI case deals with the same thing. If someone is concerned about human rights in the US, then of course he or she would be angry at the treatment of Mitnick and Sklyarov, and of course he or she would be suspicious of the FBI tracking emails.
Right or wrong, this isn't a double standard at all. It's just two sides of the same coin.
However, it seems like it was just a web bug, and the FBI had a warrent, so I doubt anyone seriously has any problem with that. But can you honestly blame people for being suspicious, especially considering the PATRIOT act and Carnivore?
Because whenever the US gets involved in a conflict, they seem to get blamed for everything that goes wrong and get no credit for what goes right.
Unfortunately, that's largely the way of the world at the moment. You can see the same social effect in the media's attitude to celebrities. Which do you think would sell more newspapers? A well known celebrity saving a someone's life, or a well-known celebrity murdering someone?
ALL COUNTRIES act in their own interest.
Did I say any different? I believe that's my point. There's a theory that it was Britain that first bombed German cities, not wayward German bombers who happened to get the wrong target. Certainly, it was more advantageous from a military perspective for Britian, if Germany went and bombed civilians rather then precious airfields. Whether that's theory is true or not, I don't know, but it's certainly plausible.
But it's raw revisionism to (as you are trying to do) minimize the impact of America's entrance into World War II.
Revisionism? I believe the only two points I've made in this thread is that the US government's current foreign aid policy isn't very good (which I backed up with numbers), and that the US involvement in the Battle of Britain was quite minimal (which I also backed up).
If you want to argue against this, then you're very welcome to, but back your arguments up. Otherwise, by claiming that P40s were critical to winning the Battle of Britain when as far I can tell they certainly were not, seems more revisionist then anything I've put forward.
We haven't even talked about what would have happened in the Pacific if Japan hadn't been checked. Would YOU like to have lived in a Japanese-controlled Phillippines?
Where did this come from? I almost feel as if by previous replies have been creatively revised! You keep trying to put words in my mouth, and twice now in this thread I've had to point out that I claimed no such thing. Frankly, it's getting tiring, so let me repeat myself one more time. I am not belittling US involvement in World War II. It is doubtful whether Germany could have been defeated without US aid. It is almost certain that Japan would not have been defeated.
That is not to say that I don't also believe that it is doubtful whether Germany could have been defeated, if Hitler had not initiated Operation Barbarossa, either. A number of factors contributed to the complete Allied victory. There are any number of ways Nazi Germany could have survived the war, of which lack of US involvement is but one. Generally, Hitler's flaw was fighting too many battles all at once. Taking on the US was a mistake. Taking on the USSR at the same time, was a mistake. Taking on Britain was, I suppose, a mistake as well, in as much that Germany wasn't able to invade.
But, before you get any ideas, I direct you to my previous comments; US involvement in WW2 was extremely important to the eventual Allied victory in Europe, and was almost entirely responsible for victory in the Pacific theater as well.
Isolationism seems like a better idea, day by day.
Because people dare to suggest some battles against "evil" didn't much involve the USA?
The US has done a lot to aid democracy, almost certainly more than any other nation on Earth, but you have to be realistic. By being blind to your faults, you will only repeat your mistakes.
Some people think that the US has acted only in its own interests throughout history, and view it as corrupt, and evil. Others, usually US citizens, think that the US has always acted in the values of justice and democracy, fighting the evil Nazis, communists, and, recently, terrorists. Both views, are, of course, wrong. Or, rather, they present a black and white picture of a world that is very grey indeed. Without US involvement, much of Europe would have been controlled by the USSR. Without US involvement, quite a few military/fascist coups around the world would not have succeeded. The US has had a hand in bringing several corrupt and fascist regimes to power, in order to prevent the spread of Communism.
To claim that the USA hasn't ever been in the moral wrong is foolish. To claim the US has contributed nothing to the world, or that it is wholely corrupt and evil, is equally, if not more foolish.
I think you've missed the point (and you're not alone). They're shooting at who they see as the big gun in the Linux world - that's not Red Hat, it's IBM. And one of the things IBM sells is big iron servers that let companies run dozens or hundreds of virtual Linux machines, all on one box.
Ooh! I hadn't thought of that. That could be a pretty insightful comment:)
How many of those Spitfires and Hurricanes were in the skies in 1940?
True, I was taking the total number ever made, though there is a reason for that. The reason being, is that I cannot find any source whatsoever that indicates that P40s were used as fighters against German planes in the Battle of Britain. There were the 140 P40s from France, but I have no idea how many were ordered from the US, or, indeed, if any were. So instead, I compared the total number of P40s used by Britain in comparison to the total Hurricanes and Spitfires, as that was the only statistic availiable.
There were approximately 600 Hurricanes and 300 spitfires at the start of the Battle of Britain according to these statistics. And Wikipedia and other sources reference the Hawker Hurricane as accounting for 70% of kills.
So all I can say for certain is that the P40 accounted for less that 30% of the downed German planes. Also, unless you can find something, there seems to be no reference at all to the P40s ever being used in combat, and no statistics to how many were used. Surely, if the P40 was so important, at least some mention of it could be found.
In short, it was the Hawker Hurricane that was responsible for the majority of German losses, and not the P40 (I have no idea where you got the idea the P40s turned the course of the battle).
However, it was not really the superiority of the planes that won the day. The Messerschmitt Bf109 was probably superior to the Spitfire, the best plane the British had at that time, and German pilots generally had greater experience in the air. What swung the tide was the short range of the Messerschmitts (they could only stay over Britain a scant hour, whilst the Spitfires and Hurricanes could stay up all day), and, of course, radar. Britain had the best radar capabilities of the war, which meant it could concentrate it's outnumbered pilots to give local superiority. Interestingly, Germany didn't believe Britain had radar at all, at first. Apparently, a large blimp was sent near Britain at the start of the war, to listen out for radar signals. British radar operated at a wavelength of 10m, whilst German radar operated at 50cm, and so the German blimp, looking for radio waves on the 50cm scale, completely missed the signals.
I'd also imagine that Bletchley Park had quite a bit to do with it. The Battle of Britain is particularly interesting, from a technological point of view, in that it was won almost entirely through intelligence, from radar, and, presumably, by listening in on German reports. The forces commited to Luftwaffe to Operation Sealion outnumbered British aircraft 4 to 1. In addition, their pilots were generally better trained and had more experience. And yet the Luftwaffe were defeated, primarily because British forces knew exactly where they were going. German troops were almost flying blind, whilst the RAF knew where each and every German squadren was.
You're right, the Lend-Lease Act was signed in 1941, but that law codified a practice that Roosevelt had basically implemented by executive fiat for years.
That said, the majority of planes in the Battle of Britain were British, at least on the side of the allies. Also, do you have any source for that? I can't find reference to the US allowing deferred payment on governmental suppies before the Lease Lend act.
There was one isolated incident where 50 old US destroyers were exchanged for the use of several British naval bases, but apart from, that, I can't find much.
Again, if you think that practice was not critical to Britain's war effort, I believe Mr. Churchill would disagree with you.
Well, later on, almost certainly. Churchill tried many times to convince Roosevelt to aid Britain, and, of course, to enter the war. In the end it took Pearl Harbor to get the USA into World War II.
However, I doubt that US involvement was a prime factor in the defense of Britain in 1940.
Your web site says.uk. If you are British, and you don't think the Lend-Lease Act kept the Germans in France and not in London, you're delusional.
The Lend-Lease Act (or the Lease-Lend Act): March 11, 1941. The Battle of Britain: 10 July - 31 October, 1940.
Whatever the importance of the act, and I'm certainly not debating it was important, it had nothing to do with the defeat of German forces over Britain.
Without the P-40 Warhawks supplied by the US, the Battle of Britain would have been lost. Period.
Um... Pardon? You mean out of the 8'300 Spitfires and 14'000 Hurricanes it was the 1000 P-40s spread throughout the Commonwealth that turned the tide of the Battle of Britain.
An aircraft Wikipedia describes as having "lack-lustre performance". And the first production version of the plane was "Deemed unsuitable for use as a fighter in Europe, where it was thought inferior to the Spitfire, Hurricane and Bf-109, the Tomahawk was used for training and some low-level tactical reconnaissance."
I'm not saying that the US won the war, singlehanded...that would be foolish. But if you think the war could have been won without US industrialism and American blood, I think you're a poor student of history.
I never claimed any such thing. But as you say, the US could not have won the war singlehandedly, either.
"Microsoft-sponsored benchmarks prove that multiple WinTel Web servers perform better than a Linux mainframe acting as a Web server consolidator."
This is a pretty fun quote, and implies quite a lot. Note that the "multiple WinTel Web servers" weren't compared to multiple Linux/Intel Web servers, which implies that no matter how the results were fiddled, and no matter what the distribution of Linux used, the benchmarks showed Linux outperformed Windows on Intel hardware.
So instead they compare the Windows setup to a "Linux mainframe acting as a Web server consolidator", because they can't get the results they want, any other way. Why else would they compare apples to oranges, unless there was no way to make the benchmarks favour Microsoft?
How do you know it's a 0% success rate? Are you party to knowledge of some fatal flaw in the lander module? Whilst "The design is not proven to be successful", the design isn't proven to be inherently unsuccessful. Any number of things could have gone wrong, after all. Perhaps some component that wasn't correctly made, or perhaps the airbags hit a snag, or perhaps a number of different things.
Your example is also flawed. Beagle 2, in theory, was supposed to work, whereas your bricks, according to scientific theory, almost certainly wouldn't work. Beagle 2 certainly reached Mars successfully. Just, apparently, not all in one piece;)
I don't think France surrendering counts as "entering the war".
It declared war on Germany, therefore it entered the war.
To compare the United States war effort to the French war effort is absurd.
Granted, the two sides were quite different. The US entered a war after it was attacked, when there was little chance of its own terrority or citizens being threatened. France entered a war to come to the aid of another country, when there was quite a large chance of French citizens being hurt as a consequence.
As it was, France miscalculated, but you can hardly say it lacked bravery. Tactical sense, perhaps:) - But then I doubt anyone at that time considered how fearsome the German war machine really was, or how fast Poland would fall. Considering its size, and what it managed to do, the German army was the best on the planet at that time. Indeed, at the start of the war, Germany had quite a technological edge in tanks and planes.
If you really think that Europe's borders would look anything like they do today, had the US not entered the war, you're a loony.
Did I say that? Of course not. I said that US involvement was certainly important. However, its a mistake to think that the victory of the Allies in WW2 was entirely down to the US. If Britain and France had neglected to fight, then who knows what might have happened. More realistically, if Operation Barbarossa had never taken place, Germany might not have lost.
When you count private contributions, the governmental foreign-aid figures are dwarfed, and the U.S. comes off looking much better in relation to other countries.
Without knowing how much money is donated through private contributions in other countries, you can't automatically assume the US "comes off looking much better".
In any case, I wasn't debating that. Lord Ender said: "NASA is part of the american government. So is our unmatched foreign aid program." So I was just pointing out that the US government doesn't really have a very good aid program at all. The US people probably give as much aid as everyone else in the world who can afford it:)
Much foreign aid is channeled through the military and other agencies. When the Army rebuilds a hospital in Afghanistan, or the Navy captures pirates or drug smugglers in the Straits of Molucca, or NASA builds a modern airport in Africa to provide a place for the shuttles to land in an emergency, they do a great service to humanity that does not show up in these figures.
I'd imagine that the US Military, for good or for bad, has done a lot more to blow things up then it has to fix them. That's what any military is primarily designed for.
Most of the countries in your list do nothing of the sort. They make an ODA budget, write a check, and that's it. And their irreligious, self-centered, overtaxed citizens assume that is sufficient, and do not come close to matching the American charitable contributions.
And the basis of your claim is? Besides that ad hominem attack, I mean.
These figures do not reflect the trillions of dollars and thousands of lives that this country has contributed to the destruction of collectivist totalitarianism. Whether in the form of National Socialism (Nazi Germany) or Communism, nothing in history has caused more human misery than collectivist ideologies. We destroyed them for the benefit of all mankind and will continue to do so.
Thousands of lives? Well, yes, the US can claim that it has sacrificed a lot in its pursuit of democracy, but remember that many more lives, millions, in fact, have been lost by other countries that have similar aims. Also remember that the vast majority of those US fallen were soldiers. Other countries weren't so lucky.
On another note, whilst US involvement in World War II was substancial, it certainly wasn't the only factor. Also, remember that the US entered World War II because it was attacked in 1941. France and Britain entered World War II to come to the aid of other countries in 1939. Whatever the motivations of the US later in the war, Germany and Japan declared war on the US, not the other way around.
By the time the US entered the war, Germany had lost the Battle of Britain, and Hitler's biggest blunder, Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union, had already taken place.
Whilst US involvement in many matters in history have been important, it's somewhat naive to assume the US entered into every conflict purely due to ideological reasons, and it's quite incorrect to paint a picture of the US as the only combatant.
The AC is correct in that the US does not send almost all of it's aid to Israel. More goes to Russia than Israel, and US foriegn aid is pretty well spread out. Of course, if you measure US aid as a percentage of its GDP, the US doesn't send very much at all, less than many other nations, including much of the EU. Denmark tops the scales with nearly 1% of it's GDP going to foreign aid. The US manages ten times less.
Whilst it isn't a bad aid program, it's certainly not "unmatched". The EU member states together send out twice as much aid as the US. 27 billion dollars of aid compared to the US's 12.9 billion.
You're being a little picky. When the parent poster says he's "against the American government", I rather think he meant he doesn't like the policies of the current administration. When someone says, "I hate the government", they don't usually mean, "I hate every government agency, including the police, NASA, the military, and any governmental scientific research programs." So stop being so picky with your words:)
Secondly, an unmatched foreign aid program? Well... I suppose you could put it that way. Whilst the US did put away 12.9 billion for Official Development Assistance (foreign aid), as a percentage of GDP that's only 0.12% of the US's wealth. That's not much in comparison to how much the US makes.
In fact, the following countries donate more of their GDP to foreign aid: Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Sweden, Belgium, Ireland, France, Finland, Switzerland, the UK, Canada, Germany, Spain, Australia, Portugal, New Zealand, Japan, Austria, Greece and Italy.
SCO claims here that over 65 files in the Linux kernal have been "copied verbatim" from SCO source. Over 65 files are claimed to be exactly identical (give or take a few comments and copyright notices, I assume).
What's more, according to the article, the letters "name more than 65 programming files". So if a copy of one of the letters can be obtained, then we know at least some of what SCO is claiming to be copied. And not just similar files, nope-nope. SCO's saying that those 65+ files are identical to 65+ files in Linux. Shouldn't be too hard to prove one way or the other, no?
If you read carefully, the link provided only says that it was the film that was faked, not the existance of Pearce or his aircraft. Pearce, as far as I know, really did exist, and really did build that plain,according to articles like this and others. Just google it up. Hard to believe a faked film was the basis of evidence for several books on the subject.
What, besides the fact that the KDE project is moving over to the media subsystem and accessiblity architecure (and already uses the XML libs) all developed for the GNOME project isn't a big dent in the statement that KDE has more advanced technology? Pfff.
I didn't say that KDE has more advanced technology, just that it's further along in general. Compare GNOME architecture to KDE architecure. I'd rather not get into a big point-by-point argument, as the architecture of both is quite involved. I'm not saying GNOME is bad in any way, just that KDE is further along, and in many ways has a better engine. That's not to say GNOME will not become better than KDE, but remember that KDE has had longer to mature than GNOME. And in many ways, Qt is a better toolkit than GTK.
Yeah, I'll bet that GNOME hello world program really stretched things.
Ad Hominem attacks are a really nice way to make your point there. Have you gone through the GTK and Qt tutorials, by any chance? From your talk, I rather assume not.
Good lord, are you deliberately being clueless. I can write an application for GNOME with a license that says "FUCK YOU, I OWN YOU AND YOUR FIRST BORN CHILD." and link to the GNOME libs. May I suggest a little research on your part before mouthing off again (it doesn't however, seem to affect the zealot upmodding that goes on).
Well, apart from the fact that a licence is limited by law, you're more or less correct, except there are limitations to the LGPL. No static linking is a headache for proprietry developers not associated with a particular distribution.
However, perhaps I was exaggerating a little. Ironic that KDE is more Free-as-in-speech than GNOME though, especially considering GNOME's origins:)
Still, a LGPL licence for GTK I like more than a GPL licence for it.
Oh man, you've clearly never used GNUMERIC.
And you clearly don't know the meaning of the word "former". As I said, I prefer Gnumeric over KSpread, but KSpread intergrates better with KDE and KOffice than Gnumeric does with GNOME. That's a result of KDE's architecture.
If you've got lots of users, you've got survival. GNOME the project guaranteed its survival by those large commericial deals.
Because commercial deals are the only way of getting users. And no commercial deal has ever resulted in few users adopting a product.
SUSE is now run by Novell and Ximian is now running the desktop.
Perhaps you could indicate a modern SUSE distro that favours GNOME over KDE? Oh, that's right, there isn't one.
Personally, I can't see that Novell would make SUSE switch. Would they go to all the trouble of remaking YAST and changing focus? KDE is a largely European effort. GNOME is more USian. SUSE is European, and it's developers have quite a bit of experience with KDE.
That SUSE will change desktops is pure speculation. It may occur, but I don't think it's too likely myself, and you've offered nothing in the way of evidence to suggest that this is their strategy.
You are like all KDE zealots, you constantly repeat the same tired meme... until you are incapable of seeing anything else.
AC: KDE's going to die! GNOME's superior! Me: I don't think so. AC: You damn KDE zealot!
As I said before, this looks a lot like a troll, though your zealous pursuit of this thread seems to indicate otherwise.
Yes, written by Nicholas Petreley and pals... look, get out more. See the world.
Conspiracy theories aside, my searches turn up zip. Perhaps you could find an article that explains the superiority of the GNOME engine over KDE's?
Slashdot Mirror
Considering those two probes were on the searing surface of Venus, the "little" amount of data sent is more of an accomplishment than a failure.
:). The two probes I was referring to were Mars 6 and Mars 7.
Venus? I was talking specifically about Mars landers, ie. those that were meant to land on Mars, not Venus
I haven't noticed any more anti-US comments then pro-US, myself. Perhaps USians notice the criticism leveled against the US more than the criticism leveled at other countries?
:)
Personally, I think the US has done quite well so far at getting mars landers to the surface. Here's the tally so far:
The US: 4/5 landers succeeded. Yay!
The USSR: 3/7 landers succeeded, though 2 of those that reached the surface sent back little data.
Britain: 0/1. Oh well, better luck next time
Of course, the budgets for the projects differed vastly. Beagle was a lightweight, and nearly, nearly, made it. Oh well, Mars has eaten more expensive probes before.
General Relativity predicts the existance of singularities. Just because they deal with infinities doesn't mean they don't exist. Quantum theory obviously does have a problem with infinite points, but then Quantum theory doesn't play nice with Relativity anyway. The two theories are currently incompatable with one another.
Science is a type of belief system. Man I hate the dumbasses in the world that forget this. Why would science not be a belief system. What makes it special nothing.
Actually, the scientific method is almost the opposite to belief. Belief is about accepting something as true. Science is about proving things false beyond reasonable doubt. A theory isn't scientific if it cannot be proved wrong.
You do realise that a scientific law isn't something set in stone, but rather an observed trend? Indeed, Newtons Law of Gravity is only an approximation.
Besides which, as far as I'm aware, there has been no occassion when the entropy of the Universe has been observed to decrease. Humans may tidy up and make things, but the entropy they add to the Universe, usually through waste heat, is greater than the amount of order they impose upon the Universe, often by several orders of magnitude.
In other words, the Second Law of Thermodymanics certainly doesn't imply the existance of a God.
As an aside, I believe the AC was pointing out that even if there were a God, what guarentee does one have that He's even interested in talking to us?
We applaud the hackers who so cleverly get around protections on technology. We had our "Free Kevin Mitnick" and "Free Dmitry" campaigns.
I thought the "Free Kevin Mitnick" campaign was about his imprisonment without trial for several years. I don't think anyone was debating that he should have been let off without any punishment, after all he did break the law. Just that denying him trial for several years isn't really something that's done in democracies.
Dmitry Sklyarov did something perfectly legal in his own country, and got arrested for it in the US. That wasn't an issue of freeing Dmitry just because he cleverly got around protections in technology, but because he did nothing illegal in the first place, and was still locked up.
So both those cases were singled out not due to anything clever on behalf of the hackers (in both senses of the word) involved, but because their human rights were infringed.
Here is a nice hack done for a good reason by the same law enforcement that is supposed to investigate and stop such crimes as extortion. And how do we react? Government spying! Conspiracy!
So the first campaigns you mention came to public attention because of obvious infrigement of rights. This latest FBI case deals with the same thing. If someone is concerned about human rights in the US, then of course he or she would be angry at the treatment of Mitnick and Sklyarov, and of course he or she would be suspicious of the FBI tracking emails.
Right or wrong, this isn't a double standard at all. It's just two sides of the same coin.
However, it seems like it was just a web bug, and the FBI had a warrent, so I doubt anyone seriously has any problem with that. But can you honestly blame people for being suspicious, especially considering the PATRIOT act and Carnivore?
Because whenever the US gets involved in a conflict, they seem to get blamed for everything that goes wrong and get no credit for what goes right.
Unfortunately, that's largely the way of the world at the moment. You can see the same social effect in the media's attitude to celebrities. Which do you think would sell more newspapers? A well known celebrity saving a someone's life, or a well-known celebrity murdering someone?
ALL COUNTRIES act in their own interest.
Did I say any different? I believe that's my point. There's a theory that it was Britain that first bombed German cities, not wayward German bombers who happened to get the wrong target. Certainly, it was more advantageous from a military perspective for Britian, if Germany went and bombed civilians rather then precious airfields. Whether that's theory is true or not, I don't know, but it's certainly plausible.
But it's raw revisionism to (as you are trying to do) minimize the impact of America's entrance into World War II.
Revisionism? I believe the only two points I've made in this thread is that the US government's current foreign aid policy isn't very good (which I backed up with numbers), and that the US involvement in the Battle of Britain was quite minimal (which I also backed up).
If you want to argue against this, then you're very welcome to, but back your arguments up. Otherwise, by claiming that P40s were critical to winning the Battle of Britain when as far I can tell they certainly were not, seems more revisionist then anything I've put forward.
We haven't even talked about what would have happened in the Pacific if Japan hadn't been checked. Would YOU like to have lived in a Japanese-controlled Phillippines?
Where did this come from? I almost feel as if by previous replies have been creatively revised! You keep trying to put words in my mouth, and twice now in this thread I've had to point out that I claimed no such thing. Frankly, it's getting tiring, so let me repeat myself one more time. I am not belittling US involvement in World War II. It is doubtful whether Germany could have been defeated without US aid. It is almost certain that Japan would not have been defeated.
That is not to say that I don't also believe that it is doubtful whether Germany could have been defeated, if Hitler had not initiated Operation Barbarossa, either. A number of factors contributed to the complete Allied victory. There are any number of ways Nazi Germany could have survived the war, of which lack of US involvement is but one. Generally, Hitler's flaw was fighting too many battles all at once. Taking on the US was a mistake. Taking on the USSR at the same time, was a mistake. Taking on Britain was, I suppose, a mistake as well, in as much that Germany wasn't able to invade.
But, before you get any ideas, I direct you to my previous comments; US involvement in WW2 was extremely important to the eventual Allied victory in Europe, and was almost entirely responsible for victory in the Pacific theater as well.
Isolationism seems like a better idea, day by day.
Because people dare to suggest some battles against "evil" didn't much involve the USA?
The US has done a lot to aid democracy, almost certainly more than any other nation on Earth, but you have to be realistic. By being blind to your faults, you will only repeat your mistakes.
Some people think that the US has acted only in its own interests throughout history, and view it as corrupt, and evil. Others, usually US citizens, think that the US has always acted in the values of justice and democracy, fighting the evil Nazis, communists, and, recently, terrorists. Both views, are, of course, wrong. Or, rather, they present a black and white picture of a world that is very grey indeed. Without US involvement, much of Europe would have been controlled by the USSR. Without US involvement, quite a few military/fascist coups around the world would not have succeeded. The US has had a hand in bringing several corrupt and fascist regimes to power, in order to prevent the spread of Communism.
To claim that the USA hasn't ever been in the moral wrong is foolish. To claim the US has contributed nothing to the world, or that it is wholely corrupt and evil, is equally, if not more foolish.
I think you've missed the point (and you're not alone). They're shooting at who they see as the big gun in the Linux world - that's not Red Hat, it's IBM. And one of the things IBM sells is big iron servers that let companies run dozens or hundreds of virtual Linux machines, all on one box.
:)
Ooh! I hadn't thought of that. That could be a pretty insightful comment
How many of those Spitfires and Hurricanes were in the skies in 1940?
True, I was taking the total number ever made, though there is a reason for that. The reason being, is that I cannot find any source whatsoever that indicates that P40s were used as fighters against German planes in the Battle of Britain. There were the 140 P40s from France, but I have no idea how many were ordered from the US, or, indeed, if any were. So instead, I compared the total number of P40s used by Britain in comparison to the total Hurricanes and Spitfires, as that was the only statistic availiable.
There were approximately 600 Hurricanes and 300 spitfires at the start of the Battle of Britain according to these statistics. And Wikipedia and other sources reference the Hawker Hurricane as accounting for 70% of kills.
So all I can say for certain is that the P40 accounted for less that 30% of the downed German planes. Also, unless you can find something, there seems to be no reference at all to the P40s ever being used in combat, and no statistics to how many were used. Surely, if the P40 was so important, at least some mention of it could be found.
In short, it was the Hawker Hurricane that was responsible for the majority of German losses, and not the P40 (I have no idea where you got the idea the P40s turned the course of the battle).
However, it was not really the superiority of the planes that won the day. The Messerschmitt Bf109 was probably superior to the Spitfire, the best plane the British had at that time, and German pilots generally had greater experience in the air. What swung the tide was the short range of the Messerschmitts (they could only stay over Britain a scant hour, whilst the Spitfires and Hurricanes could stay up all day), and, of course, radar. Britain had the best radar capabilities of the war, which meant it could concentrate it's outnumbered pilots to give local superiority. Interestingly, Germany didn't believe Britain had radar at all, at first. Apparently, a large blimp was sent near Britain at the start of the war, to listen out for radar signals. British radar operated at a wavelength of 10m, whilst German radar operated at 50cm, and so the German blimp, looking for radio waves on the 50cm scale, completely missed the signals.
I'd also imagine that Bletchley Park had quite a bit to do with it. The Battle of Britain is particularly interesting, from a technological point of view, in that it was won almost entirely through intelligence, from radar, and, presumably, by listening in on German reports. The forces commited to Luftwaffe to Operation Sealion outnumbered British aircraft 4 to 1. In addition, their pilots were generally better trained and had more experience. And yet the Luftwaffe were defeated, primarily because British forces knew exactly where they were going. German troops were almost flying blind, whilst the RAF knew where each and every German squadren was.
You're right, the Lend-Lease Act was signed in 1941, but that law codified a practice that Roosevelt had basically implemented by executive fiat for years.
That said, the majority of planes in the Battle of Britain were British, at least on the side of the allies. Also, do you have any source for that? I can't find reference to the US allowing deferred payment on governmental suppies before the Lease Lend act.
There was one isolated incident where 50 old US destroyers were exchanged for the use of several British naval bases, but apart from, that, I can't find much.
Again, if you think that practice was not critical to Britain's war effort, I believe Mr. Churchill would disagree with you.
Well, later on, almost certainly. Churchill tried many times to convince Roosevelt to aid Britain, and, of course, to enter the war. In the end it took Pearl Harbor to get the USA into World War II.
However, I doubt that US involvement was a prime factor in the defense of Britain in 1940.
Your web site says .uk. If you are British, and you don't think the Lend-Lease Act kept the Germans in France and not in London, you're delusional.
The Lend-Lease Act (or the Lease-Lend Act): March 11, 1941.
The Battle of Britain: 10 July - 31 October, 1940.
Whatever the importance of the act, and I'm certainly not debating it was important, it had nothing to do with the defeat of German forces over Britain.
Without the P-40 Warhawks supplied by the US, the Battle of Britain would have been lost. Period.
Um... Pardon? You mean out of the 8'300 Spitfires and 14'000 Hurricanes it was the 1000 P-40s spread throughout the Commonwealth that turned the tide of the Battle of Britain.
An aircraft Wikipedia describes as having "lack-lustre performance". And the first production version of the plane was "Deemed unsuitable for use as a fighter in Europe, where it was thought inferior to the Spitfire, Hurricane and Bf-109, the Tomahawk was used for training and some low-level tactical reconnaissance."
I'm not saying that the US won the war, singlehanded...that would be foolish. But if you think the war could have been won without US industrialism and American blood, I think you're a poor student of history.
I never claimed any such thing. But as you say, the US could not have won the war singlehandedly, either.
"Microsoft-sponsored benchmarks prove that multiple WinTel Web servers perform better than a Linux mainframe acting as a Web server consolidator."
This is a pretty fun quote, and implies quite a lot. Note that the "multiple WinTel Web servers" weren't compared to multiple Linux/Intel Web servers, which implies that no matter how the results were fiddled, and no matter what the distribution of Linux used, the benchmarks showed Linux outperformed Windows on Intel hardware.
So instead they compare the Windows setup to a "Linux mainframe acting as a Web server consolidator", because they can't get the results they want, any other way. Why else would they compare apples to oranges, unless there was no way to make the benchmarks favour Microsoft?
How do you know it's a 0% success rate? Are you party to knowledge of some fatal flaw in the lander module? Whilst "The design is not proven to be successful", the design isn't proven to be inherently unsuccessful. Any number of things could have gone wrong, after all. Perhaps some component that wasn't correctly made, or perhaps the airbags hit a snag, or perhaps a number of different things.
;)
Your example is also flawed. Beagle 2, in theory, was supposed to work, whereas your bricks, according to scientific theory, almost certainly wouldn't work. Beagle 2 certainly reached Mars successfully. Just, apparently, not all in one piece
I don't think France surrendering counts as "entering the war".
:) - But then I doubt anyone at that time considered how fearsome the German war machine really was, or how fast Poland would fall. Considering its size, and what it managed to do, the German army was the best on the planet at that time. Indeed, at the start of the war, Germany had quite a technological edge in tanks and planes.
It declared war on Germany, therefore it entered the war.
To compare the United States war effort to the French war effort is absurd.
Granted, the two sides were quite different. The US entered a war after it was attacked, when there was little chance of its own terrority or citizens being threatened. France entered a war to come to the aid of another country, when there was quite a large chance of French citizens being hurt as a consequence.
As it was, France miscalculated, but you can hardly say it lacked bravery. Tactical sense, perhaps
If you really think that Europe's borders would look anything like they do today, had the US not entered the war, you're a loony.
Did I say that? Of course not. I said that US involvement was certainly important. However, its a mistake to think that the victory of the Allies in WW2 was entirely down to the US. If Britain and France had neglected to fight, then who knows what might have happened. More realistically, if Operation Barbarossa had never taken place, Germany might not have lost.
When you count private contributions, the governmental foreign-aid figures are dwarfed, and the U.S. comes off looking much better in relation to other countries.
:)
Without knowing how much money is donated through private contributions in other countries, you can't automatically assume the US "comes off looking much better".
In any case, I wasn't debating that. Lord Ender said: "NASA is part of the american government. So is our unmatched foreign aid program." So I was just pointing out that the US government doesn't really have a very good aid program at all. The US people probably give as much aid as everyone else in the world who can afford it
Much foreign aid is channeled through the military and other agencies. When the Army rebuilds a hospital in Afghanistan, or the Navy captures pirates or drug smugglers in the Straits of Molucca, or NASA builds a modern airport in Africa to provide a place for the shuttles to land in an emergency, they do a great service to humanity that does not show up in these figures.
I'd imagine that the US Military, for good or for bad, has done a lot more to blow things up then it has to fix them. That's what any military is primarily designed for.
Most of the countries in your list do nothing of the sort. They make an ODA budget, write a check, and that's it. And their irreligious, self-centered, overtaxed citizens assume that is sufficient, and do not come close to matching the American charitable contributions.
And the basis of your claim is? Besides that ad hominem attack, I mean.
These figures do not reflect the trillions of dollars and thousands of lives that this country has contributed to the destruction of collectivist totalitarianism. Whether in the form of National Socialism (Nazi Germany) or Communism, nothing in history has caused more human misery than collectivist ideologies. We destroyed them for the benefit of all mankind and will continue to do so.
Thousands of lives? Well, yes, the US can claim that it has sacrificed a lot in its pursuit of democracy, but remember that many more lives, millions, in fact, have been lost by other countries that have similar aims. Also remember that the vast majority of those US fallen were soldiers. Other countries weren't so lucky.
On another note, whilst US involvement in World War II was substancial, it certainly wasn't the only factor. Also, remember that the US entered World War II because it was attacked in 1941. France and Britain entered World War II to come to the aid of other countries in 1939. Whatever the motivations of the US later in the war, Germany and Japan declared war on the US, not the other way around.
By the time the US entered the war, Germany had lost the Battle of Britain, and Hitler's biggest blunder, Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union, had already taken place.
Whilst US involvement in many matters in history have been important, it's somewhat naive to assume the US entered into every conflict purely due to ideological reasons, and it's quite incorrect to paint a picture of the US as the only combatant.
The AC is correct in that the US does not send almost all of it's aid to Israel. More goes to Russia than Israel, and US foriegn aid is pretty well spread out. Of course, if you measure US aid as a percentage of its GDP, the US doesn't send very much at all, less than many other nations, including much of the EU. Denmark tops the scales with nearly 1% of it's GDP going to foreign aid. The US manages ten times less.
:)
Whilst it isn't a bad aid program, it's certainly not "unmatched". The EU member states together send out twice as much aid as the US. 27 billion dollars of aid compared to the US's 12.9 billion.
But it certainly doesn't go all to Israel
You're being a little picky. When the parent poster says he's "against the American government", I rather think he meant he doesn't like the policies of the current administration. When someone says, "I hate the government", they don't usually mean, "I hate every government agency, including the police, NASA, the military, and any governmental scientific research programs." So stop being so picky with your words :)
Secondly, an unmatched foreign aid program? Well... I suppose you could put it that way. Whilst the US did put away 12.9 billion for Official Development Assistance (foreign aid), as a percentage of GDP that's only 0.12% of the US's wealth. That's not much in comparison to how much the US makes.
In fact, the following countries donate more of their GDP to foreign aid: Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Sweden, Belgium, Ireland, France, Finland, Switzerland, the UK, Canada, Germany, Spain, Australia, Portugal, New Zealand, Japan, Austria, Greece and Italy.
SCO claims here that over 65 files in the Linux kernal have been "copied verbatim" from SCO source. Over 65 files are claimed to be exactly identical (give or take a few comments and copyright notices, I assume).
What's more, according to the article, the letters "name more than 65 programming files". So if a copy of one of the letters can be obtained, then we know at least some of what SCO is claiming to be copied. And not just similar files, nope-nope. SCO's saying that those 65+ files are identical to 65+ files in Linux. Shouldn't be too hard to prove one way or the other, no?
See subject. :)
Gollum would hide until the fight was over and then stab the winner in the back.
Advantage, Gollum.
If you read carefully, the link provided only says that it was the film that was faked, not the existance of Pearce or his aircraft. Pearce, as far as I know, really did exist, and really did build that plain,according to articles like this and others. Just google it up. Hard to believe a faked film was the basis of evidence for several books on the subject.
No, since you have the - right at the beginning of the character class, it's not used.
:)
;)
Oh, of course
Still, doesn't hurt to backslash dashes, just in case
What, besides the fact that the KDE project is moving over to the media subsystem and accessiblity architecure (and already uses the XML libs) all developed for the GNOME project isn't a big dent in the statement that KDE has more advanced technology? Pfff.
:)
I didn't say that KDE has more advanced technology, just that it's further along in general. Compare GNOME architecture to KDE architecure. I'd rather not get into a big point-by-point argument, as the architecture of both is quite involved. I'm not saying GNOME is bad in any way, just that KDE is further along, and in many ways has a better engine. That's not to say GNOME will not become better than KDE, but remember that KDE has had longer to mature than GNOME. And in many ways, Qt is a better toolkit than GTK.
Yeah, I'll bet that GNOME hello world program really stretched things.
Ad Hominem attacks are a really nice way to make your point there. Have you gone through the GTK and Qt tutorials, by any chance? From your talk, I rather assume not.
Good lord, are you deliberately being clueless. I can write an application for GNOME with a license that says "FUCK YOU, I OWN YOU AND YOUR FIRST BORN CHILD." and link to the GNOME libs. May I suggest a little research on your part before mouthing off again (it doesn't however, seem to affect the zealot upmodding that goes on).
Well, apart from the fact that a licence is limited by law, you're more or less correct, except there are limitations to the LGPL. No static linking is a headache for proprietry developers not associated with a particular distribution.
However, perhaps I was exaggerating a little. Ironic that KDE is more Free-as-in-speech than GNOME though, especially considering GNOME's origins
Still, a LGPL licence for GTK I like more than a GPL licence for it.
Oh man, you've clearly never used GNUMERIC.
And you clearly don't know the meaning of the word "former". As I said, I prefer Gnumeric over KSpread, but KSpread intergrates better with KDE and KOffice than Gnumeric does with GNOME. That's a result of KDE's architecture.
If you've got lots of users, you've got survival. GNOME the project guaranteed its survival by those large commericial deals.
Because commercial deals are the only way of getting users. And no commercial deal has ever resulted in few users adopting a product.
SUSE is now run by Novell and Ximian is now running the desktop.
Perhaps you could indicate a modern SUSE distro that favours GNOME over KDE? Oh, that's right, there isn't one.
Personally, I can't see that Novell would make SUSE switch. Would they go to all the trouble of remaking YAST and changing focus? KDE is a largely European effort. GNOME is more USian. SUSE is European, and it's developers have quite a bit of experience with KDE.
That SUSE will change desktops is pure speculation. It may occur, but I don't think it's too likely myself, and you've offered nothing in the way of evidence to suggest that this is their strategy.
You are like all KDE zealots, you constantly repeat the same tired meme... until you are incapable of seeing anything else.
AC: KDE's going to die! GNOME's superior!
Me: I don't think so.
AC: You damn KDE zealot!
As I said before, this looks a lot like a troll, though your zealous pursuit of this thread seems to indicate otherwise.
Yes, written by Nicholas Petreley and pals... look, get out more. See the world.
Conspiracy theories aside, my searches turn up zip. Perhaps you could find an article that explains the superiority of the GNOME engine over KDE's?
$filename =~ m/([^-_]{3,})\s*-\s*(.{3,})\s*\.[^.]+$/
Shouldn't that be:
$filename =~ m/([^\-_]{3,})\s*-\s*(.{3,})\s*\.[^.]+$/
You mean over HTTP. :)