There were targets of military value there. In addition to those things listed in the above wikipedia article, there must have been food production, clothing, and other items of that sort. The unfortunate thing about modern warefare is that these things are effectively military targets as they support the military ability of the country that makes them. The people, unfortunately, can work in the military or supporting factories, and are therefore part of the equation. The argument you put forth about this being so late in the war is an argument made in hindsight. At the time, the Germans were still fighting hard, and while it looked like the allies would prevail, the issue was still in doubt. You do not let up until the enemy has surrendered. Anything less will cause the war to drag on longer, and this is bad for both sides.
The German bombing of London was intended to instill terror in the British people. As with the German, the English, so it can be argued as above that this has military utility, I am just trying to make it clear that the bombing of London was no different, except that Germany did not have the means to firebomb a city, the allies did. Rest assured that the Germans would have firebombed English cities, had they the means. Go read some history, lookup Guernica, Warsaw, London, and Coventry.
Also, equivilency of casualties is not of any value. In military operations, you never strive to inflict equal damage to that which you have sustained, you attempt to knock the fight out of the enemy.
You also curiously dont mention the V1 and V2 weapons in your analysis. These weapons where terribly inaccurate, only suitable as terror weapons. And the V1's were flying against England from Feb of 1944, a year before Dresden was firebombed.
After sustaining the nerve-racking attacks from earlier in the war, I, for one, am prepared to forgive a desire to have some vengance on the Germans on the part of the English. I do think they should have forsworn it, but I can understand it.
Also, understand that the Germans to the largest extent, had opened that can of worms.
All the above said, I want it understood that I am not anti-German by any means. I do not apportion complete blame for the beginnings of World War One or Two to the Germans ( I bring in WWI, as I see it as having lead to WWII ), rather, I think it is shared amoung a great many players, the Germans included, but to no greater or lesser degree than any other.
In the same way it would not be remarkable when a German company built a German factory, nor when an Indian company built an Indian factory.
It is a bit more remarkable when the US business drones without brains build another facility outside the US, then complain that US consumers arent buying it's products. Everyone is worried about the "jobless recovery", but they fail to point the fingers at themselves for shipping the jobs ( and salaries ) overseas. Mind you, I am not nessesarily of the "protectionist" mindset, but it does seem that some moderation is called for.
They signed the consent decree, then *abided* by it, and learned from it.
I didnt track all that as it happened, but I did read about it.
I also worked for a company that used a lot of IBM equipment. I started as a MS lover and looked down on IBM. In working with IBM ( and in watching MS through the years ), I have reversed on each of those positions. I grew to respect IBM's business sense and ethics ( at least what I could see of it ), and I learned to appreciate what IBM had to offer in the way of hardware ( I started thinking speed was all, I came away impressed with the business utility, business-minded-ness, and robustness of thier stuff ).
Now, if only MS would have such a change of "heart" as I perceive IBM had, the world would be a much better place. And they could stop being paranoid megalomanics.
As to giving away, in a sense, no, but putting Unix in the public domain *would* make sense, as it would forstall any future successor in interest from making similiar calculations, and would reduce IBM's risks. ( see also, the other posts about IBM's contributions to Linux )
Is it just me, or does that seem all wrong to you?
A: What corps are going to be interested?
B: The statement was made that this would free NASA from budget cuts. How do you figure? Companies cut projects, subcompanies, people all the time. Why would they be any more stable on this issue?
C: The same companies that need govt oversight to respect human life and safety issues? ( Please dont tell me this is not an issue. Look at some history ( industrial revolution esp ) to see what "capital" will do to make a buck. ( And, no, humans have not changed that much in the interval between, see Enron, et al for some enlightenment ( no, no humans lost lives, due to the regulations against ) ) If you dont agree, then I would suggest you have been living with the guard rails so long you dont see them anymore. Consider moving to other parts of the world, and experience it for yourself ).
D: Can you imagine the corporate intrigue? The politics? The govt funding and governance has it's problems, to be sure, but I cant see corp funding doing the trick.
Why does MS *need* to get into searching?
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Why do they need to rip off and own everything that succeeds?
Why cant there be other big players in the market aside from MS without them trying to push them out / take them over.
And how can you Microphiles even say that MS isnt sqwashing competitiveness.
Robot tanks are a significantly harder problem. The truck just needs to get to map coordinates such and such and wait.
The tank needs to deal with active oposition on the way to where it wants to be, after deciding where it wants to be. And that may change as the situation on the battlefield evolves. When to fire the guns ( main cannon, plus antipersonell machine guns ) are a subset of the problems that an autonomous tank would need to deal with. Making sure that it is not caught too far from resupply, that it is operating in proper cooperation with the other tanks in it's unit, that it's unit is cooperating with the other tank units, air and other ground forces, etc, etc.
I know I minimized the problems the truck would have to deal with mroe than I probably should have, but a tank has all those, really, plus a bunch of others.
No, not quite. In the language itself, you have a point, but there is a lot of overloading of the old stuff to extend what was there to new things. Also, you have all of STL, the streaming libraries, etc, etc.
and, using an array of silly little casting tricks, you can emulate every feature of C++ in C...
Not quite. Variable scoping would be an issue, at the least. Also, you gain the ability to declare a variable anywhere, and there are more issues to variable visibility than need be contended with in straight C.
A: It is not just a hunk of metal, it is a rememberance of the hard work, dedication and brilliance of the team that made that machine. If you think it is just another rocket, go read the history. If you dont come away amazed, you havent gone very far with it. 1.5 million pounds of thrust per engine in the bottom stage ( 5 engines ). Hadnt been done before, hasnt been done since. The Russians with their heavy launch vehicle went with many smaller engines, because they were ( rightly ) afraid of the engineering challenges ( not to put the Russians down, coordinating all those engines was a feat in and of itself ). Note that we cannot build them now without another research program to rediscover all the hows and the whys. A shame if you ask me.
B: While it will not suddenly vanish, it will slowly deteriorate. Aerospace materials are not meant to sit around in the sun all day for decades without maintainance. The weather takes it's toll, suprisingly, vandals *will* remove things that they can get at, birds nest inside whereever they can get at, etc, etc.
It is a monument to what we as humans can accomplish when we set our minds to it. Future generations deserve to see it.
Anything they can do to make it easier for you to replace linux with one of their products is the wedge in the door to convert you lock stock and barrel.
You put this on, recompile your linux/unix app and run it. Makes the barrier they have to get over to convert you lower. Now that you have that MS machine there, are you going to write more linux/unix apps for it? No, you will probably buy MS tools and write native.
That is all fine and good, except the mortgage I am paying and the food I buy, etc, etc are not competing on the same level. And she is not competing either. Her wages are not going down. It is sooo easy to say things like this when it is not you that has to go thru it.
So, soon I declare bankrupcy, people I owe money to get less, the salary I used to make is not used to buy goods and services here. Times enough people ( without the bankrupcy or with ), winding its way thru the companies and people forming our economy, and the companies doing this outsourcing dont have much in the way of revenues, people cant afford their cars, houses, etc, etc. The executives making these decisions will complain bitterly about the way things used to be. Except they shot themselves in the head, but were too stupid to realize it at the time.
I dont want that to sound too protectionist, but the places that those jobs go to will provide an economic boost there, little will come back. We are bleeding out our lifes blood, but little to none of it will be bled back our way. Look at the trade histories of most of our trading partners. They have all taken as much advantage of our economy as possible and given as little as possible back.
Why arent these mgmt types outsourcing *their* jobs? I am sure we can find some C*O's in India and China who would do the same or better job, and lots cheaper. I would like for them to get a taste of their own medicine.
When you ship a job overseas, where does the salary go? Well, duh, overseas, with the job. So, there is less money here in the states to buy goods and services with. That money is in India or China or whereever buying Indian or Chinese or whatever goods and services. I cant see that having anything but a bad effect on our economy. And this, from our economic leaders ( who still seem to be enjoying large paychecks. ).
If you have insider information, or can read the future, you can make a killing. It is all semi-random, and you have no way of knowing beforehand what any event will do, in the main.
I have noted that Gar Alperovitz has illicited responses to his work ranging from praise to critisism that he is selective in chosing only reference works that support his topic, ignoring others that do not support it. In viewing other pages written by him, I find him citing ( he does not list the exact report, so it is difficult to check him, not proper history, IMHO ) reports done well after the wars end ( 1946 ) to support his conclusion. He also claims that the Japanese had decided to surrender, needing only to convince the "diehard Army Group" to surrender. Problem is, that "diehard Army Group", IIRC, were in charge and running things. Kinda like saying that the American Govt had decided to withdraw from Vietnam because 12 congressmen and a large part of the citizenry wanted us out. Doug Long's site refers to itself, and cites, in the main, a book by Butow. I have not taken the time to check the book references, but so far, I remain unconvinced.
I would suggest reading primary source documents ( like the documents written by the individuals involved at the time, and lots of them ) and some books outside the revisionist camp before you decide. It is too easy to see things in black and white and monolithic entitys that are anything but ( the Japanese Government, the American Goverment, to name just two ), and oversimplify on that basis. Think about what was know, to whom, what credence they gave to it, and other real limiting factors. Play devils advocate for yourself, and examine from both sides.
"According to the article, there is evidence showing that at the time the bombs were dropped, Japan was communicating with Russia with the aim of having Russia act as an intermediary in negotiating a peace in the US. Further, the USA knew of this"
The fact that the Japanese had spoken with the Russians about negotiations is not the same as a signed surrender. I think it could also be argued that the Japanese government of the time was not exactly well known for good faith bargaining. Why not deal directly with the US? It has been alleged that the reason that the Japanese opened talked with Russia was to attemt to convince them to come in on the Japanese side, with the Japanese offering a partition of Asia as the reward. The surrender that Germany and Japan had been informed would be acceptable was an unconditional surrender, nothing less. Negotiations were not really involved. Also, keep in mind that this might have been a gambit to buy time to regroup militarily, and even if it wasnt, it would be prudent of the American command to consider that it might be. The feel I get from my reading on the subject was that the Japanese were not very interested in surrendering. A lesson American forces in battle learned the hard way was that individual Japanese would feign surrender in order to sucker in US forces, then betray that surrender. Further, Japanese in the waters ( downed airmen, naval ship crews ) would swim away from US ships that tried to rescue them, and would fight with rescuers when they were successful. Noteworthy is the fact that in the final surrender, Hirohito had to overrule his government.
"At that point in time, Japan was in a very poor position, running low on resources and having its cities severely bombed conventionally. Again, according to the article, provided that the terms of a peace would allow them to keep the Emperor, Japan was all too willing to surrender."
Yes, they were in a poor position. They decided not to surrender. They kept on with the fight that they had started and had been making since about 1936 or so.
( Yes, the American embargo put them in a bad place. Why was there an embargo in the first place? America was using non-military methods to protest the Japanese invasion of China. They were in the drivers seat on this. )
"All too willing..."
So, why didnt they?
"The choice wasn't between using atomic bombs or a land invasion. Given this situation, a land invasion, along with the concommitant loss of life, would have been simply unnecessary."
I would suggest that it is easy today to think this way. Try putting yourself in the position of the people that had to make the decisions, and try to understand what information they had to work with, and what experiences they had been through before you judge them and their actions. It is, I think, the standard you would want applied to an examinination of your actions in a hard place. So, please, what choices were there? They could not leave Japan alone, unless they wanted to go back through all that again later.
"Note also: even if there had been a land invasion, the lives lost would have been chiefly confined to those in the armed forces of the two nations (note also that this figure as estimated today would have been similar to or less than the 160000 casualties of the Hiroshima bombing.)"
All the research I have done on this subject leads me to believe that there are several things wrong with this statement. Namely A) that the fighting and dieing on the Japanese side would have been largely confined to the military and B) that the casualty figures would be 160000.
A) In the fighting on Okinawa, civilians were influenced by the propaganda from the Japanese government to such an extent that many jumped from cliffs commiting suicide rather than being captured by Americans. The defence the Japanese put up as the Americans got closer to the home islands became increasingly desparate, including suicide attacks both on the ground and from
I would suggest a closer reading of history. I can see that there is a healthy ability to debate this issue, but I cant see anything definite about it. In hindsight, it all looks so easy, and so many of the details that lead to that decision are lost to us today.
In taking many of the islands on the way to Japan, the American military had a rather good measure of just what it took to take those islands.
In taking Okinawa, at least ( IIRC ), civilians ( men, women, and children ) jumped off cliffs when it was obvious that the American forces were going to succeed. Such was the propaganda that had been fed to the Japanese citizenry about the Americans.
In the analysis of what it would take in terms of American casualties gave results where 1 million American dead where expected. It was expected that in addition to the regular Japanese army, that ordinary civilians would be taking part in the resistance, and would therefore be part of the Japanese casualties. Would the Japanese have surrendered? After my reading of this era and issue, I do not think so, not until the population of Japan was decimated. Not until after a long hard fight in which many many Japanese and Americans were dead. It is easy to loose sight of this in the interval that has elapsed since. Here is an interesting link tangent to the subject.
So, was the first or second bomb really needed?
In a sense no, but the effect saved many many Japanese and American lives. Yes, there was a cost to that.
Was the second bomb needed?
The Japanese had not surrendered after the dropping of the first bomb, indeed, it took five days after the dropping of the second bomb before the Japanese announced that they would surrender.
Now, as to the point that this is not something other countries should be worrying about.
The military outlook unfortunately has to look at capabilities first and foremost, and then at intents. So, while I agree that India lives in a rough neighborhood, and I can understand wanting a better deterent than they had before, I can also see that Pakistan would feel exactly the same way about the issue, and so might others in the region. Thus begins the proliferation. Tensions rise, and who knows what happens next?
How is this any different from the service companies that sell phone services giving you a phone? According to your argument above, that is a bad move, and by definition should not be done.
"Watch for both sides to go toe-to-toe on the technology until everyone's rights on both sides are all f'ed up. Then the government will step in further and both sides will like the outcome even less. But hey, if both sides has used reason in the first place, see a few ads, get some stuff for free, maybe we wouldn't even be talking about any of this: spam, TV, pop-ups, anything. Noone will win now"
If both sides had used reason...
Seems to me that I ( and billions like me ) are one of those "sides". What "reason" could I use? What am I supposed to do?
There is one "side" that controls how much of this unneeded wastefull crap is sent out, and brother, it aint me ( if it was, none would EVER get sent ).
So, all that said, I do buy the argument that spammers, by going so far in what they do, have ruined it ( to the extent that it is ruined ) *For Themselves*. And I say good riddance.
Also, this argument falls apart. I chose to watch television knowing that the way that the programs are subsidized is thru advertisement. So, I can either watch the program or not, or go buy a DVD and see it without advertisement ( in theory, anyway... ). With email, I have already purchased everything that I need to use this facility, and none of this is subsidized by advertisement. The advertisement is coming to me even though I do not want it, and regardless of steps I may have taken to keep it from coming.
Are you a spammer? STOP! And yes, I can be mad at him. He/she/it wastes my time and money in ways that I have not allowed.
"Simply not true". Perhaps. Depends on the workload, the apps, the usage patterns, amoung other things. Every day? Probably an exageration. Rebooting only because a patch was applied? Well, maybe if you apply patches frequently enough, it will cover the issue up.
The MS vc++ runtime ( circa 4.2 ) had memory leaks in it. ostrstream and other stream functions I cant recall just now ( yes, I did all the stuff to free things up, checked it 11 billion ways from Sunday, had others look at it, etc, etc ). Dont know if they ever got fixed or not. I do recall that 4.2b did not fix the issue. We were writing a server ( ran on UNIX and NT ), so we had to be able to run for a long time in a colo. Then we tested it and found memory leaks. C++ app, so this was not entirely unexpected. What was unexpected was that the app was not the only thing leaking! This happened fairly early in my career, after that, every time MS came out with another "Windows is enterprise ready!", I just about puked. Desktop side stuff worked well enough, but server apps? Decidedly not.
Course, I also recall the sp 2 for windows nt had an interesting property. The above application had a component that was capable of writing a lot of data to disk. We were using MS API's, no funny business, NTFS. When I ran a stress run on a machine that SP2 was on, things would seem normal untill the next reboot. Then the machine would do it's post, then nothing. Do an upgrade install of the OS ( so that it is back to original ), and it still didnt work. Had to reinstall the OS.
Then, recently, I had a gig at a place that was doing.net on XP machines. Dont know if it was memory, but after a while ( no, not daily ), the compiler ( C# ) would start complaining about things that were just bizzare. Got an EMITIL warning once ( loved the advice in the message, make my application "less complex" or somesuch. Yeah, I'll just toddle off and tell my mgmr that we need to make the app "less complex". I am *sure* that will go over well. Er, ah, no, how about you make the tool more stable instead. )
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.ezresult.com/article/Bombing_of_Dresden _in_World_War_II
There were targets of military value there. In addition to those things listed in the above wikipedia article, there must have been food production, clothing, and other items of that sort. The unfortunate thing about modern warefare is that these things are effectively military targets as they support the military ability of the country that makes them. The people, unfortunately, can work in the military or supporting factories, and are therefore part of the equation. The argument you put forth about this being so late in the war is an argument made in hindsight. At the time, the Germans were still fighting hard, and while it looked like the allies would prevail, the issue was still in doubt. You do not let up until the enemy has surrendered. Anything less will cause the war to drag on longer, and this is bad for both sides.
The German bombing of London was intended to instill terror in the British people. As with the German, the English, so it can be argued as above that this has military utility, I am just trying to make it clear that the bombing of London was no different, except that Germany did not have the means to firebomb a city, the allies did. Rest assured that the Germans would have firebombed English cities, had they the means. Go read some history, lookup Guernica, Warsaw, London, and Coventry.
Also, equivilency of casualties is not of any value. In military operations, you never strive to inflict equal damage to that which you have sustained, you attempt to knock the fight out of the enemy.
You also curiously dont mention the V1 and V2 weapons in your analysis. These weapons where terribly inaccurate, only suitable as terror weapons. And the V1's were flying against England from Feb of 1944, a year before Dresden was firebombed.
After sustaining the nerve-racking attacks from earlier in the war, I, for one, am prepared to forgive a desire to have some vengance on the Germans on the part of the English. I do think they should have forsworn it, but I can understand it.
Also, understand that the Germans to the largest extent, had opened that can of worms.
All the above said, I want it understood that I am not anti-German by any means. I do not apportion complete blame for the beginnings of World War One or Two to the Germans ( I bring in WWI, as I see it as having lead to WWII ), rather, I think it is shared amoung a great many players, the Germans included, but to no greater or lesser degree than any other.
when a US company builds a US factory.
In the same way it would not be remarkable when a German company built a German factory, nor when an Indian company built an Indian factory.
It is a bit more remarkable when the US business drones without brains build another facility outside the US, then complain that US consumers arent buying it's products. Everyone is worried about the "jobless recovery", but they fail to point the fingers at themselves for shipping the jobs ( and salaries ) overseas. Mind you, I am not nessesarily of the "protectionist" mindset, but it does seem that some moderation is called for.
IBM *was* as you recall.
They signed the consent decree, then *abided* by it, and learned from it.
I didnt track all that as it happened, but I did read about it.
I also worked for a company that used a lot of IBM equipment. I started as a MS lover and looked down on IBM. In working with IBM ( and in watching MS through the years ), I have reversed on each of those positions. I grew to respect IBM's business sense and ethics ( at least what I could see of it ), and I learned to appreciate what IBM had to offer in the way of hardware ( I started thinking speed was all, I came away impressed with the business utility, business-minded-ness, and robustness of thier stuff ).
Now, if only MS would have such a change of "heart" as I perceive IBM had, the world would be a much better place. And they could stop being paranoid megalomanics.
As to giving away, in a sense, no, but putting Unix in the public domain *would* make sense, as it would forstall any future successor in interest from making similiar calculations, and would reduce IBM's risks. ( see also, the other posts about IBM's contributions to Linux )
If someone could plaster your car with advertizements because of your public license plate number, you would surely want to cover it.
Also, when arguing from analogy, please ensure you use a proper analogy.
Is it just me, or does that seem all wrong to you?
A: What corps are going to be interested?
B: The statement was made that this would free NASA from budget cuts. How do you figure? Companies cut projects, subcompanies, people all the time. Why would they be any more stable on this issue?
C: The same companies that need govt oversight to respect human life and safety issues? ( Please dont tell me this is not an issue. Look at some history ( industrial revolution esp ) to see what "capital" will do to make a buck. ( And, no, humans have not changed that much in the interval between, see Enron, et al for some enlightenment ( no, no humans lost lives, due to the regulations against ) ) If you dont agree, then I would suggest you have been living with the guard rails so long you dont see them anymore. Consider moving to other parts of the world, and experience it for yourself ).
D: Can you imagine the corporate intrigue? The politics? The govt funding and governance has it's problems, to be sure, but I cant see corp funding doing the trick.
Why do they need to rip off and own everything that succeeds?
Why cant there be other big players in the market aside from MS without them trying to push them out / take them over.
And how can you Microphiles even say that MS isnt sqwashing competitiveness.
Robot tanks are a significantly harder problem. The truck just needs to get to map coordinates such and such and wait.
The tank needs to deal with active oposition on the way to where it wants to be, after deciding where it wants to be. And that may change as the situation on the battlefield evolves. When to fire the guns ( main cannon, plus antipersonell machine guns ) are a subset of the problems that an autonomous tank would need to deal with. Making sure that it is not caught too far from resupply, that it is operating in proper cooperation with the other tanks in it's unit, that it's unit is cooperating with the other tank units, air and other ground forces, etc, etc.
I know I minimized the problems the truck would have to deal with mroe than I probably should have, but a tank has all those, really, plus a bunch of others.
until the provider has a cap.
So, you see, the algorithm works just as it is.
Dont assume so much!
No, really. Wouldnt that be cool?
Have the display projected holographically in front of you, with speech recognition. Perfect!
C++ added what - 4 more keywords than C?
No, not quite. In the language itself, you have a point, but there is a lot of overloading of the old stuff to extend what was there to new things. Also, you have all of STL, the streaming libraries, etc, etc.
and, using an array of silly little casting tricks, you can emulate every feature of C++ in C...
Not quite. Variable scoping would be an issue, at the least. Also, you gain the ability to declare a variable anywhere, and there are more issues to variable visibility than need be contended with in straight C.
Who needs all these different time zones anymore.
Lets just move to one all encompassing time zone and have done with it.
Oh, yeah, no more daylight slavings time either.
They have already done this with regard to the IBM and SGI issues, to no avail ( so far, anyway ).
Cobol?
A: It is not just a hunk of metal, it is a rememberance of the hard work, dedication and brilliance of the team that made that machine. If you think it is just another rocket, go read the history. If you dont come away amazed, you havent gone very far with it. 1.5 million pounds of thrust per engine in the bottom stage ( 5 engines ). Hadnt been done before, hasnt been done since. The Russians with their heavy launch vehicle went with many smaller engines, because they were ( rightly ) afraid of the engineering challenges ( not to put the Russians down, coordinating all those engines was a feat in and of itself ). Note that we cannot build them now without another research program to rediscover all the hows and the whys. A shame if you ask me.
B: While it will not suddenly vanish, it will slowly deteriorate. Aerospace materials are not meant to sit around in the sun all day for decades without maintainance. The weather takes it's toll, suprisingly, vandals *will* remove things that they can get at, birds nest inside whereever they can get at, etc, etc.
It is a monument to what we as humans can accomplish when we set our minds to it. Future generations deserve to see it.
Anything they can do to make it easier for you to replace linux with one of their products is the wedge in the door to convert you lock stock and barrel.
You put this on, recompile your linux/unix app and run it. Makes the barrier they have to get over to convert you lower. Now that you have that MS machine there, are you going to write more linux/unix apps for it? No, you will probably buy MS tools and write native.
That is all fine and good, except the mortgage I am paying and the food I buy, etc, etc are not competing on the same level. And she is not competing either. Her wages are not going down. It is sooo easy to say things like this when it is not you that has to go thru it.
So, soon I declare bankrupcy, people I owe money to get less, the salary I used to make is not used to buy goods and services here. Times enough people ( without the bankrupcy or with ), winding its way thru the companies and people forming our economy, and the companies doing this outsourcing dont have much in the way of revenues, people cant afford their cars, houses, etc, etc. The executives making these decisions will complain bitterly about the way things used to be. Except they shot themselves in the head, but were too stupid to realize it at the time.
I dont want that to sound too protectionist, but the places that those jobs go to will provide an economic boost there, little will come back. We are bleeding out our lifes blood, but little to none of it will be bled back our way. Look at the trade histories of most of our trading partners. They have all taken as much advantage of our economy as possible and given as little as possible back.
Here are two questions for you.
Why arent these mgmt types outsourcing *their* jobs? I am sure we can find some C*O's in India and China who would do the same or better job, and lots cheaper. I would like for them to get a taste of their own medicine.
When you ship a job overseas, where does the salary go? Well, duh, overseas, with the job. So, there is less money here in the states to buy goods and services with. That money is in India or China or whereever buying Indian or Chinese or whatever goods and services. I cant see that having anything but a bad effect on our economy. And this, from our economic leaders ( who still seem to be enjoying large paychecks. ).
If you have insider information, or can read the future, you can make a killing. It is all semi-random, and you have no way of knowing beforehand what any event will do, in the main.
I have noted that Gar Alperovitz has illicited responses to his work ranging from praise to critisism that he is selective in chosing only reference works that support his topic, ignoring others that do not support it. In viewing other pages written by him, I find him citing ( he does not list the exact report, so it is difficult to check him, not proper history, IMHO ) reports done well after the wars end ( 1946 ) to support his conclusion. He also claims that the Japanese had decided to surrender, needing only to convince the "diehard Army Group" to surrender. Problem is, that "diehard Army Group", IIRC, were in charge and running things. Kinda like saying that the American Govt had decided to withdraw from Vietnam because 12 congressmen and a large part of the citizenry wanted us out. Doug Long's site refers to itself, and cites, in the main, a book by Butow. I have not taken the time to check the book references, but so far, I remain unconvinced.
I would suggest reading primary source documents ( like the documents written by the individuals involved at the time, and lots of them ) and some books outside the revisionist camp before you decide. It is too easy to see things in black and white and monolithic entitys that are anything but ( the Japanese Government, the American Goverment, to name just two ), and oversimplify on that basis. Think about what was know, to whom, what credence they gave to it, and other real limiting factors. Play devils advocate for yourself, and examine from both sides.
Regards,
"According to the article, there is evidence showing that at the time the bombs were dropped, Japan was communicating with Russia with the aim of having Russia act as an intermediary in negotiating a peace in the US. Further, the USA knew of this"
The fact that the Japanese had spoken with the Russians about negotiations is not the same as a signed surrender. I think it could also be argued that the Japanese government of the time was not exactly well known for good faith bargaining. Why not deal directly with the US? It has been alleged that the reason that the Japanese opened talked with Russia was to attemt to convince them to come in on the Japanese side, with the Japanese offering a partition of Asia as the reward. The surrender that Germany and Japan had been informed would be acceptable was an unconditional surrender, nothing less. Negotiations were not really involved. Also, keep in mind that this might have been a gambit to buy time to regroup militarily, and even if it wasnt, it would be prudent of the American command to consider that it might be. The feel I get from my reading on the subject was that the Japanese were not very interested in surrendering. A lesson American forces in battle learned the hard way was that individual Japanese would feign surrender in order to sucker in US forces, then betray that surrender. Further, Japanese in the waters ( downed airmen, naval ship crews ) would swim away from US ships that tried to rescue them, and would fight with rescuers when they were successful.
Noteworthy is the fact that in the final surrender, Hirohito had to overrule his government.
"At that point in time, Japan was in a very poor position, running low on resources and having its cities severely bombed conventionally. Again, according to the article, provided that the terms of a peace would allow them to keep the Emperor, Japan was all too willing to surrender."
Yes, they were in a poor position. They decided not to surrender. They kept on with the fight that they had started and had been making since about 1936 or so.
( Yes, the American embargo put them in a bad place. Why was there an embargo in the first place? America was using non-military methods to protest the Japanese invasion of China. They were in the drivers seat on this. )
"All too willing..."
So, why didnt they?
"The choice wasn't between using atomic bombs or a land invasion. Given this situation, a land invasion, along with the concommitant loss of life, would have been simply unnecessary."
I would suggest that it is easy today to think this way. Try putting yourself in the position of the people that had to make the decisions, and try to understand what information they had to work with, and what experiences they had been through before you judge them and their actions. It is, I think, the standard you would want applied to an examinination of your actions in a hard place.
So, please, what choices were there? They could not leave Japan alone, unless they wanted to go back through all that again later.
"Note also: even if there had been a land invasion, the lives lost would have been chiefly confined to those in the armed forces of the two nations (note also that this figure as estimated today would have been similar to or less than the 160000 casualties of the Hiroshima bombing.)"
All the research I have done on this subject leads me to believe that there are several things wrong with this statement. Namely A) that the fighting and dieing on the Japanese side would have been largely confined to the military and B) that the casualty figures would be 160000.
A) In the fighting on Okinawa, civilians were influenced by the propaganda from the Japanese government to such an extent that many jumped from cliffs commiting suicide rather than being captured by Americans. The defence the Japanese put up as the Americans got closer to the home islands became increasingly desparate, including suicide attacks both on the ground and from
...definitely, not the second bomb.
I would suggest a closer reading of history. I can see that there is a healthy ability to debate this issue, but I cant see anything definite about it. In hindsight, it all looks so easy, and so many of the details that lead to that decision are lost to us today.
In taking many of the islands on the way to Japan, the American military had a rather good measure of just what it took to take those islands.
In taking Okinawa, at least ( IIRC ), civilians ( men, women, and children ) jumped off cliffs when it was obvious that the American forces were going to succeed. Such was the propaganda that had been fed to the Japanese citizenry about the Americans.
In the analysis of what it would take in terms of American casualties gave results where 1 million American dead where expected. It was expected that in addition to the regular Japanese army, that ordinary civilians would be taking part in the resistance, and would therefore be part of the Japanese casualties. Would the Japanese have surrendered? After my reading of this era and issue, I do not think so, not until the population of Japan was decimated. Not until after a long hard fight in which many many Japanese and Americans were dead. It is easy to loose sight of this in the interval that has elapsed since. Here is an interesting link tangent to the subject.
So, was the first or second bomb really needed?
In a sense no, but the effect saved many many Japanese and American lives. Yes, there was a cost to that.
Was the second bomb needed?
The Japanese had not surrendered after the dropping of the first bomb, indeed, it took five days after the dropping of the second bomb before the Japanese announced that they would surrender.
Now, as to the point that this is not something other countries should be worrying about.
The military outlook unfortunately has to look at capabilities first and foremost, and then at intents. So, while I agree that India lives in a rough neighborhood, and I can understand wanting a better deterent than they had before, I can also see that Pakistan would feel exactly the same way about the issue, and so might others in the region. Thus begins the proliferation. Tensions rise, and who knows what happens next?
How is this any different from the service companies that sell phone services giving you a phone? According to your argument above, that is a bad move, and by definition should not be done.
"Watch for both sides to go toe-to-toe on the technology until everyone's rights on both sides are all f'ed up. Then the government will step in further and both sides will like the outcome even less. But hey, if both sides has used reason in the first place, see a few ads, get some stuff for free, maybe we wouldn't even be talking about any of this: spam, TV, pop-ups, anything. Noone will win now"
If both sides had used reason...
Seems to me that I ( and billions like me ) are one of those "sides". What "reason" could I use? What am I supposed to do?
There is one "side" that controls how much of this unneeded wastefull crap is sent out, and brother, it aint me ( if it was, none would EVER get sent ).
So, all that said, I do buy the argument that spammers, by going so far in what they do, have ruined it ( to the extent that it is ruined ) *For Themselves*. And I say good riddance.
Also, this argument falls apart. I chose to watch television knowing that the way that the programs are subsidized is thru advertisement. So, I can either watch the program or not, or go buy a DVD and see it without advertisement ( in theory, anyway... ). With email, I have already purchased everything that I need to use this facility, and none of this is subsidized by advertisement. The advertisement is coming to me even though I do not want it, and regardless of steps I may have taken to keep it from coming.
Are you a spammer? STOP!
And yes, I can be mad at him. He/she/it wastes my time and money in ways that I have not allowed.
"Simply not true". Perhaps. Depends on the workload, the apps, the usage patterns, amoung other things. Every day? Probably an exageration. Rebooting only because a patch was applied? Well, maybe if you apply patches frequently enough, it will cover the issue up.
.net on XP machines. Dont know if it was memory, but after a while ( no, not daily ), the compiler ( C# ) would start complaining about things that were just bizzare. Got an EMITIL warning once ( loved the advice in the message, make my application "less complex" or somesuch. Yeah, I'll just toddle off and tell my mgmr that we need to make the app "less complex". I am *sure* that will go over well. Er, ah, no, how about you make the tool more stable instead. )
The MS vc++ runtime ( circa 4.2 ) had memory leaks in it. ostrstream and other stream functions I cant recall just now ( yes, I did all the stuff to free things up, checked it 11 billion ways from Sunday, had others look at it, etc, etc ). Dont know if they ever got fixed or not. I do recall that 4.2b did not fix the issue.
We were writing a server ( ran on UNIX and NT ), so we had to be able to run for a long time in a colo. Then we tested it and found memory leaks. C++ app, so this was not entirely unexpected. What was unexpected was that the app was not the only thing leaking! This happened fairly early in my career, after that, every time MS came out with another "Windows is enterprise ready!", I just about puked. Desktop side stuff worked well enough, but server apps? Decidedly not.
Course, I also recall the sp 2 for windows nt had an interesting property. The above application had a component that was capable of writing a lot of data to disk. We were using MS API's, no funny business, NTFS. When I ran a stress run on a machine that SP2 was on, things would seem normal untill the next reboot. Then the machine would do it's post, then nothing. Do an upgrade install of the OS ( so that it is back to original ), and it still didnt work. Had to reinstall the OS.
Then, recently, I had a gig at a place that was doing
Mine was a Cyberdyne systems model T-101.