Hardly comparable. You don't get to claim that you are working with incomplete information when you create a culture within the intelligence community that only allows you to receive incomplete information.
"A lot of soldiers would have died, including a lot of US soldiers too. I doubt as many as were killed by the bombs though."
You doubt it. Have you researched that assertion?
Estimates at the time put the cost of Conquering Japan at between one and a half to four million Americans and over twice as many Japanese, many of those civilian. This not the Battle of the Ardennes, this is Stalingrad. To suggest that the invasion of Japan would be comparable to defeating Germany after the Russians had ripped the heart out of the Wehrmacht is absurd.
As it turns out supplies of the new purple hearts didn't even run out. They changed the design and produced a new batch. They could still be handing out WWII purple hearts if they wanted to.
Although I agree with the thrust of your argument it is worth keeping in mind that the Japanese were keen to surrender to the Americans than they were to the Soviets, who had just entered the Pacific War. Problem with deciding what the main cause of the Japanese surrender was is that you hear different things from different people.
I tend to view things this way. The reasons that were at the forefront of the mind of those who decided to drop the bomb were reprehensible. Showing the power of the bomb to the Soviets and American willingness to drop it were not good or moral reasons for the bombs use. That doesn't change the fact that the justification for dropping the bomb holds water. Just because many of the leaders of the day viewed the bomb primarily as a tool for diplomacy with the Soviets doesn't mean that the other reasons they had in mind were not justification enough.
Everyone who criticizes the decision to drop the bomb likes to forget that Truman and his advisors were working with incomplete information. The Soviets had essentially black balled the Japanese and refused to pass on their peace offerings in anticipation for the Soviet invasion. What the Americans knew about Japanese desires for peace that had obtained from code cracking efforts. The Japanese leadership was split, and even if the Emperor sided with the peace party a coup was entirely possible (more than this, when the Emperor did side with the peace party there was an attempted coup).
What can we say for sure? The Soviet invasion was more of a fear for the Japanese than the bomb was. The bomb did not cause as many deaths as fire bombing. What was happening in Eastern Europe (especially Poland) was no secret. If the bomb had been dropped a few more times (hard at the time since after Nagasaki there would be no more bombs for a while) then perhaps it would have been a bigger factor. What the bomb offered was an excuse for the Japanese leadership, particularly the Emperor to surrender.
"The enemy now possesses a new and terrible weapon with the power to destroy many innocent lives and do incalculable damage."
That sounds much better than something like:
"A new power has entered this war who will do untold cruelty to our people"
The first provides an excuse. This weapons is new, it is totally devastating. Surrender may bring dishonor, but we are surrendering because of a new and terrible weapon. The second sounds like the Emperor was prepared to sell out Japan because he could not bring himself to have his subjects do their duty in a conventional fight.
If the Americans had not dropped the bomb (assuming humanity would be alive to debate the issue) can we say for certain the hardliners would no have mounted a successful coup? Would Japan be split in two like Korea? How many more Americans and Japaneses would be dead? I cannot in all honesty answer that question. I don't know if the dropping the bomb saved lives. And I have the benefit of hindsight, something Truman did not have.
Given that Harvard MBAs are what they hand out to rich daddies children to get their big bucks and that the course content (like pretty much every MBAs) amounts to 'get to know your classmates, their daddies are rich and can get you good jobs / contracts because you are friends with their son', I'd suggest that the above statement lists George Bush's highest qualification.
Your response repeats many of what I believe are your previous errors so I will respond more concisely.
We do not, by your definition know that the Earth revolves around the sun. Can you show absolutely that the Earth goes around the Sun? Can you even show that there is a Sun?
If you admit this to be the case, then you must admit that we do not even know that people exist either. If people might not exist, trade might not exist. Then your whole philosophy falls apart. Then there is no knowledge except what we define. In that eventuality the only reason you could 'know' more than I do is if you defined more things than I do.
I also disagree with your concealed assumption that subjective value is unquantifiable.
You have an odd definition of mathematics. You seem to consider anything which is not a zero sum game to be outside of mathematics when in fact that is not the case. The case you listed can be analyzed mathematically and very simply. It is true that the DVD is worth more to the individual buying it that $20. For example it might be worth up to $25 dollars to them. Best Buy on the other hand value it at less than $20 dollars. They may value it at $15 say. This is not a problem for mathematics. We can analyse the problem using game theory. Very simple game theory. There are four possibilities, each individually agrees to trade or not to trade. It is obvious that there is a net benefit to both parties if they agree to trade and no benefit if neither trades. For the three cases where someone decides not to trade (no trade+no trade, trade+no trade and no trade+trade) the value for Best Buy is $15 dollars and for the buyer it is $20 dollars. If they both agree to trade then Best Buy gets a pay off of $20 dollars (a $5 dollar increase) and the buyer gets a payoff of $25 dollars (also a five dollar increase $5). Everyones position is improved, and the trade leads to an efficient system (one that cant be improved). Heck we can even quantify the amount of value that has been added to the system due to the trade. Overall the system is up $10. Any quantity which can be well defined can be calculated because the example is so trivial.
You say that subjective value has been increased. What other kind of value is there? We can define the cost of goods, in the sense that the market price for goods will be some amount, but that doesn't necessarily reflect their value because value is inherently subjective.
You haven't actually proved anything about the world with this example though. You have made a bunch of glaring assumptions. You have assumed that people will trade when in increases the (as you say subjective) value of their wealth. You can show this assumption is on the whole valid by a properly controlled experiment and a good use of statistics, but you haven't learned that it is the case until you do the experiment. You have assumed that Best Buy and the buyer are both rational, that they wont suddenly for no good reason decide not to engage in the transaction. This is actually a serious flaw in more complicated arguments because people do sometimes randomly change strategy and it does lead to complicated effects like efficient solutions not being fluttering hand stable.
You are misguided if you think that the purely mathematical analysis you have done (which is a crude version of game theory) has taught you anything. If anything, it has concealed what you don't know because you think you have learned a new truth when you have made a collection of unproven (but testable) assumptions.
Your suggestion that trade in some way violates some principle of mathematics is absurd. If one assumes that the object has intrinsic value outside of what the purchaser is prepared to pay for it then it is true that this value seems at once to be both greater than and less than itself, but this is just an indication that the assumption that objects have value above that which they are worth to individuals (or collections of individuals). Experiment has shown (and your experience has shown) this is not the case. Your reasoning lead you to the correct conclusion but for the wrong reason. It was not the fault of mathematics that the theory "everything has an objective value" is wrong. It is the fault of the assumption of the theory.
It is certainly the case that these profound assertions, coupled with the experiments that back them up, lead one inexorably to new explanations for the existence of society, for the division of labor and so on. But they theory is inherently mathematical, and it is this mathematical nature which allows you to draw these conclusion.
I will admit I have no idea what the 'identity property' is. I'm assuming that you mean to suggest that the situation before trade and after trade are iden
I appreciate that basic errors can occur in sciences. Assumptions can be wrong. That is precisely the reason you want broad ranging studies like the precursors to this one which establish theories which can later be demonstrated or rejected by a later study.
The suggestion that mathematics or statistics could have epistemological errors is philosophical hand wrangling. Fine, if you were a philosopher. But only a lunatic would suggest that the field of statistics is in some way undermined by such controversies as the axiom of choice.
Mathematics is not a science. You cannot get incorrect assumptions, only inconsistent assumptions. Or assumptions that are not necessary or not liked.
While I don't understand your example from economics (I think you are talking about the difference between a zero sum game and a non-zero sum game), the problem you describe involves replacing an equals sign with a greater than sign. It is entirely possible to handle that situation in mathematics. What is more, since the human brain is just a collection of neurons, anything which cannot be understood mathematically, cannot be understood by humans since you can completely represent all of the possible algorithms the brain can using elementary branches of mathematics.
You cant advance knowledge without knowing how well you know something. Now I don't happen to believe that most papers that are published advance knowledge. Part of the reason is that nearly every arts, humanities or social science paper makes any number of common errors. Heck even the hard science have these basic errors in them. They might use the wrong statistical test. They might propose a theory without testing it or offering any way of testing it. The bottom line is the only types of paper that actually advance knowledge are those that propose a new theory and a way of testing it, and those that actually test those theories. Unless of course we are talking pure mathematics or philosophy.
If we really want to improve the quality of studies that are generated then term long statistics courses should be mandatory for any major which seeks to advance scientific knowledge.
If you cant analyze it mathematically, how can you discover anything at all? If you don't have a significance or error to go with your result then you have no idea if your result is ball park, dead on, or just plain wrong. Everything which can be stated as fact requires a standard estimate of uncertainty from statistics. When that is not available the least reliable source or list of sources on which the conclusion is based is quoted. It is then understood that this exists to guide a future mathematical approach, or to set up assumptions. The same approach exists in other sciences and even mathematics itself. We haven't proved the Riemann hypothesis, we are not sure if it is true, but there is lots of evidence to suggest as much. And there are lots of things that we have shown are equivalent to proving the Riemann hypothesis. The bottom line however, is that until the Riemann hypothesis is shown to be true, everything based on it is also unproven albeit interesting speculation. The same problem exists in physics. The Higgs particle has never been observed directly, but if we speculate that it is there then we can explain a number of experimental results. Until I see a Higgs particle come out of the LHC however I will not consider it's existence to have been demonstrated. The quest for historical fact should be the same as any other science, simply coupled with the acceptance that unlike the hard sciences it is much easier to produce speculation without proof than it is to produce hard results. This results in a difference in method, not in objective. The mathematical approach is never inappropriate when your objective is to establish fact.
A friend of my studied history at university. You know what one of her lecturers told her after her first essay.
"No one gives a fuck what you think."
This is exactly how I feel about modern 'Journalism' and writers. I don't want some long flowery introduction which contains no new information, and is usually designed to cloud my opinion with the authors bias. Or worse 'teases' me with a hint of what might be the case later in the article. I want the facts. If I had by way news would be in bullet points. I don't care how good you can spell, how pretty your prose is or how how wonderful you write. I want facts. I don't read the news to be given opinions or bias, I don't read it to admire how well written it is.
I also don't care what the experts say unless they have some actual evidence to back it up. I don't want to hear 'Well if I was a betting man I'd guess that...', I want to hear 'In 1967 there was a similar incident with...'. I can make up my own mind. Write the news like the person reading it has more than 3 functional brain cells.
To anyone thinking of going into 'Journalism' who wants to appeal to me and others like me in my generation, cut the crap. We have no patience, and it is a good thing. When we want to be entertained, we read fiction. The other day I picked up a magazine and after 3 paragraphs I gave up. After three paragraphs there wasn't a single fact. I didn't know anything about the article except about where it was written.
I have no sympathy for 'Journalists'. If they spent half as much time actually doing real investigations, exposing all the crap that goes on in this world and less of it brown nosing themselves into cushy positions and working on their pretty prose, then they might actual out perform the bloggers.
Even the article itself is unbelievably indirect and full of opinions without facts. Three paragraphs in and I still don't know any new information, other than some artist thinks he has an unquantifiable talent. Big wow. All artists think they have an unquantifiable talent. Eventually I find out that we are talking mostly about people who write books. Writers. Great, so am I going to find out how writers have been affected? No I'm going to get a bunch of opinions from a sample of unknown quality. Great, so I might as well go ask my mate Dave what he thinks the internet has done to writers.
Of course this problem is indicative of a much wider one. Virtually no one who works in a field which is primarily artists know how to determine facts. And what information they do have, they have no idea how to present concisely. Half the books I read could be one third the length. You want an example of a well written factual book? I advise every Journalist to go and read 'General Relativity' by P. A. M. Dirac. It's only short, but contains a bucket of information. That is how a book should be.
It isn't just people who write books. Take the media, we have 24 hours of non-news. They speculate and get half baked experts on to double the speculation, and don't bother to go and get any new details themselves. Save for the odd human interest story that tells you absolutely nothing about the big picture.
Case in point, when is the White House press core going to grow a pair and ask some tough questions and demand real answers? When are we going to get reports with some real statistics in that talk about how Iraq is actually going? I shouldn't have to watch a report to congress by General Petraeus to see some actual charts and data on how things are going. Heck I know his report is going to be biased but when no one at CNN seems to know what a pie chart is and prefers to endlessly run off the same pictures of Baghdad while pointlessly speculating what am I going to do? I don't care about human interest stories. I don't care how patriotic you guys in the media think you are being. I want the facts.
The president compares Iraq to Vietnam, I have to go to bloody Wikipedia to bring up the differences in casualty rates so I can decide for myse
Unless Microsoft distribute GPL 3 software they are not. Under the Novell deal they now have to, but since the deal is now very unfair to Microsoft the smart thing to do would be to try to renegotiate it with Novell. They are entitled to do this because of these unforeseen circumstances. This is what Microsoft should be doing, but they aren't. I've no idea why. Maybe they want to provoke a court case. Maybe they don't care about GPL 3 because they just want their patents for FUD and don't actually intend to drop the patent bomb. Maybe Novell is being belligerent. Maybe there is something Microsoft knows that I don't that would prevent them renegotiating the deal. Point is at the moment I've not heard anything from Microsoft suggesting they plan to revisit the deal with a mind to avoiding distributing GPL 3.
You analysis, while factually accurate makes hidden assumptions.
You assume that the only way to make money from music is by selling it unit by unit. A co-operative which pays musicians per song produced might also work. While after making the song, it has zero marginal cost, making the next song does not. The system in question is called patronage, and for the first time in history ordinary people can, via the internet, become a patron of the arts.
You have also missed that legitimate copies of music have added value to many people. The problem is that the added value is not 99c to most.
The situation you are describing at the end of your post has a name. It is an excellent description of monopoly pricing. Now artists are given this monopoly as part of a social contract in the hope that by making music more valuable than it actually is, there will be more, higher quality music entering the public domain.
At present, in my lifetime I have yet to see much benefit from the copyright system. It is supposed to give me access to my cultural heritage after a limited time. Yet people can put DRM on culture to stop it ever entering the public domain, and copyright terms are near infinite.
Copyright exists to enhance the public domain. Cant enhance the public domain if it cant enter it. Choice is simple, release music without DRM, get copyright protection. Release music with DRM, lose copyright protection and don't come crying when the DRM is broken.
Same goes for software released with copy protection. How can it enter the public domain if there is no way to copy it?
I stand corrected. While the sum of the casualties since WWII wouldn't have run out the stock pile of purple hearts of 1945 manufacture, the design was changed and new ones are manufactured. Those new design purple hearts are what are currently being awarded.
Your idea has been addressed else where, but I will point out the obvious problems.
Your plan needs 3 bombs (between 4 and 6 if you want to do more than one strike and you are lucky), and they only had 2, with the next one some time away. Every week of delay cost lives (Japanese, American, Chinese etc., and soon Russian).
Your plan demonstrates an unwillingness to use the bomb, precisely the opposite of what you want to do.
You plan alerts Japan to the existence of the bomb. At this stage in the war Japan was not intercepting small bomber groups to conserve fuel. You make it obvious you have the bomb, then they would have started intercepting again.
Any human being whose reaction to the death of a quarter of a million people isn't sheer horror is a monster. However, that doesn't make the alternatives better.
An interesting combination of Ad Hominem and a straw man. I said the justification that was in the minds of those using the bomb was reprehensible. Not the decision itself. Is that so hard to grasp? They made the right choice, for the wrong reason. Your next points disregard the rules of war glibly. Your philosophy would cause more civilian death than a thousand of the men who undertook Hiroshima. You do not understand the nature of war.
From what I understand your figures are the mid to high end estimates for casualties. I agree with you, but I wanted to be sure my figures were defensible, so I opted for the low end. I knew I could continue to make my point accepting high figures for the deaths from Hiroshima and Nagasaki and low figures for the deaths for Operation Downfall.
I've addressed every point you have made else where. I have already conceded that the reason the Administration had for dropping the bomb was morally reprehensible. However all of the quotes you have given talk of surrender, not unconditional surrender. If you do not believe that a power which has committed copious war crimes and conducted a war in a manner so morally reprehensible as to deserve the title infamous, should be deconstructed, that is your choice. I will answer some of the quotes you present. Eisenhower was mostly involved in Europe. His pacific counterparts did not agree with his assessment and I choose to believe them because they would know better. Suing for peace != unconditional surrender. I've already acknowledge that militarily the atom bomb did not determine the outcome of the war. Heck the outcome of the war was known after Midway. Surrender != unconditional surrender. Dropping the atom bomb to force unconditional surrender is not the same as dropping the bomb as a last ditch spiteful move to kill civilians. A better comparison might be, what if the Germans had the bomb in 1941 and destroyed Scapa Flo?
I'm not American, I'm British. And I agree with most of what you have said. The American military reasoning for dropping the bomb was reprehensible. Doesn't change the fact that the 'excuse' they gave for doing so holds water. I'm well aware that the total deaths from dropping the bombs total around a quarter of a million. I also had in my mind the bombing of Dresden and Tokyo. However, the fact remains that if Imperial Japan had been allowed to survive that number would be a drop in the ocean, because you can bet your arse that the Soviet Union would have found an excuse to restart the war at a later date if Japan didn't essentially become a satellite state of the United States. A demonstration would not suffice. For a start it would tell the Japanese that the Americans had the bomb. The Japanese were not intercepting lone bombers at this stage because of a lack of fuel. If they know that they were carring the atom bomb that might have changed that. Besides, a demonstration would appear weak, like the Americans were unwilling to use the bomb. I believe the US military has been responsible for many immoral acts. The Vietnam war immediately springs to mind. The premature invasion of Iraq in the second gulf war. The premature exit from the first gulf war without forcing unconditional surrender, leaving thousands of Shiite insurgents to die in a rebellion the Americans encouraged. It is not a question of inability to admit the failing of my own (or in fact your country), but rather my capacity to way evidence without becoming overwhelmed by the horror of the facts. What purely military base should they have targetted? You know of a naval base not inside a city? Osama bin Laden is not leader of a sovereign state. Nor was the intent of the 9/11 attacks to target military infrastructure in the case of the World Trade Center. Nor did the people delivering the attacks wear a uniform marking them as combatants. There was no declaration of war (at least in part because you have to be a sovereign state to declare war). If the West was at war with Saudi Arabia and they fire bombed Washington to get to the pentagon, that would be a fairer comparison. The actually reasons for using the bomb are morally reprehensible, but the excuses given hold. All I am saying is you put me in Harry S. Truman's shoes and give me the two choices he was faced with, I would in good conscience make the same decision he did.
There is considerable debate on this issue as far as I know. Militarily the Soviet Union posed far more of a threat to the short and long term security of the civilians of Japan (it's not like what happened to Berlin was a secret, or what would happen to eastern Europe wasn't known). There is however one thing that is clear. The atomic bomb gave Emporer Hirohito (and to some extent Togo) the excuse he was looking for the push for an end to the war on all fronts. Civilians would understand surrender faced with this new terrifying weapon. The coup attempt that resulted from the repeated attempts to surrender was probably far smaller than it would have been without the bomb. The terms of the surrender were sufficient for the allies. The last one is the key. Without the bomb, would the Japanese have accepted unconditional surrender (with the exception of the retention of the Emporer) if the allies did not have the bomb? Maybe, but we know four of the big six wanted to reject the Potsdam declaration out of hand until the extent of the Soviet attacks became known, and the attack on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Then it was split 3-3. Without the intervention of Emporer Hirohito (who certainly considered the bomb important) this deadlock may have lasted. I don't know what the result would have been without the bomb. Perhaps the Japanese would have continued fighting until it was clear that the Soviets were preparing to invade Korea, or perhaps the Japanese islands themselves. It is possible that without the bomb the Japanese would have used losing territory to the Soviet Union as a bargaining chip against the Americans to get more favourable terms. Your point about American B-17 raids on Japan is a good one. It is important to remember these were small nukes. The building directly under the bomb survived the explosion in Hiroshima. This does strongly suggest that the bomb was not, in the military leaderships mind, a deciding factor, considering that the death toll in Tokyo from fire bombing was higher than in Hiroshim or Nagasaki through the atomic bomb. However, the bomb is more than a incendiary weapon. I believe the Emporer said it best in his radio address to the Japanese people: "The enemy now possesses a new and terrible weapon with the power to destroy many innocent lives and do incalculable damage." The key word being terrible. The atomic bomb, more so than any other weapon, was terrifying. It is this terror that gave the Emporer the option of offering surrender (along with the Soviet invasion).
The estimated American casualties alone for the invasion of Japan are around two to four times that. Now consider that they are better equipped and supplied than their conscripted Japanese adversary who would have suffered far worse. In addition most of the Japanese casualties would be civilian. I'm certainly not glorifying the killing of civilians. However, if I presented to you a choice. Kill a quarter of a million Japanese now, or kill half a million Americans and 4 million Japanese over three to four months of bloody combat, what would you choose? If you choose to kill four million more people just because you don't like the word nuclear or because you think in some way being shot is better than dieing in giant fireball, then I believe you to be a cold heartless bastard. Hell the United States is still handing out purple hearts of 1945 manufacture because of the anticipated casualties of the Japanese campaign were higher than the sum total of wounded or dead servicemen in every war since. I suggested what the Japanese intent was. They believed they could break their 'inferior' American foe. The Americans had plans for Olympic which forecast many more casualties that the Japanese thought the Americans could take. All you have done is prove my point, the Americans would have accepted the high casualties and pushed on, since they planned for them anyway. The bottom line is that while the Japanese hoped to bring the war to an end with tens of thousands of casualties by breaking the American will to fight, that was not going to happen. You are suggesting an option (American capitulation to the Japanese plan) which was never on the table to begin with.
Alright Woodrow Wilson, if thats what you want to believe.
I firmly believe that Hitler was helped by the fact that he was able to convince many Germans that the treaty of Versaille was unfair because the 'November Criminals' had signed it while Germany still had some effective military and could still fight the war. Coupled with the fact that the terms of the treaty were humiliating themselves (full blame for the war placed on Germany, reparations, Sudentenland handed over to the new Czechoslovakia, splitting Germany in two). Unconditional surrender is not about humiliation. The requirement of unconditional surrender existed because the conduct of those states with which the allies were fighting required wholesale removal of thier leadership and replacement by an authority that would be cast iron allies of the West. Unconditional surrender was just another way of saying to the militarist leaders of Japan "we will dismantle your government, and you will be tried for war crimes".
Yeah, but not unconditionally surrender. This was to prevent the Great War mistakes. Japan had seriously violated just about every reasonable practice of war, and the dropping of the atom bomb shortened the war, and help stop them. Japan was not going to surrender in two weeks, they were via diplomatic back channels suing for peace, this is not the same as offering unconditional surrender. In the end the Japanese still insisted that they be allowed to keep their Emporer, and the allies agreed to this demand, instead of being belligerent. I don't know where you got this myth that the Japanese were willing to surrender unconditionally, but the whole point of further increasing the size of their armed services during and after Okinawa was to make taking the islands of Japan as much like the battle for Okinawa as possible. That would have resulted in extreme causalities on both sides. The idea was that by a few tens of thousands of casualties the Americans and their allies would agree to more favourable terms than unconditional surrender. Heck if it had been like Okinawa they might even have managed to force those terms, which would have been a disaster. The Japanese were determined to fight on to get a better peace deal. They had already lost the war so of course they were suing for peace. The only question remains, is it right to target military installations in the cities of your enemy during a time of war to force his surrender, knowing that tens of thousands of civilians will die. If you believe the allies were right to demand unconditional surrender (which I do), and if you believe that the Americans should have kept their nerve conducting the invasion and no accepted a lesser peace, then one is forced to ask the following question. Which course of action would cost more civilian lives, more destruction of infrastructure, and more military lives. The answer to all three is invasion. Dropping the bomb saved lives, civilian, military, and preserved what little remained of Japans infrastructure. It is to my mind, the only time in history dropping the bomb would be acceptable, because of the unique set of circumstances at the time.
I really don't get this position of yours. The FSF hasn't done anything to Microsoft. Novell has. Microsoft entered into a deal with Novell which in light of recent license changes is clearly unfair. Microsoft can renegotiate the deal with Novell. The deal with Novell was that Microsoft would distribute and indemnify Novells customers in return for cash + a other less relevant terms. Now the contract effectively stipulates that Microsoft must give away licenses to their patents. The Novell-Microsoft deal is therefore now unfair and the consequences of the deal disproportionate. Microsoft has three options: 1. Stick with the (obviously unfair and would never now hold in arbitration) deal and give out the patent licenses. 2. Renegotiate the deal. 3. Welch on the deal entirely and take the resulting legal consequences. The FSF has nothing to do with any of this because Microsoft has not entered into any agreement with the FSF save GPL 2. If the distribute software under GPL 3 then they enter into a new deal with the FSF. Both of these deals are seperate from the Novell deal. That is why it is different from your examples. The code that is GPL 2 is still GPL 2. It is not like a cable company changing the rules at the drop of a hat because you are free to still play by the old rules if you want to. You just have to maintain the code yourself.
The female of the species never cease to amaze me. They hit 30 and complain that all men are either taken or barsteds. In the group of barsteds there are two types:
Actual barsteds: For any women who want to know how to recognise an actual barsted, you identify them as men who 'seemed nice at first'. For any women who want help with their mate selection, avoid any man who 'seems nice at first'. Unless of course you mean 'nice' in the 'love him like a brother nice'. This group regularly gets laid because of a translation error in the female dictionary that mixed up 'nice' with 'actual barsted'. We are sorry, the dictionary was still in beta when civilisation developed and no one has worked out how to undo million's of years of evolution yet. However women are never satisfied with this group because while they are good in bed, they are also, ahem, barsteds.
Bitter: This group didn't start out as barsteds. For any women still reading, these are the guys you turned down because they were 'too nice'. After 10 years of being too nice, they have got the message. Of course being barsted doesn't have the desired effect because the actual barsted have 10 years practice on them, and waaaaaaay more experienced.
This is why all men are barsteds. One group was treated like kings, when in fact, they make the cookie monster look like a genius. The other group were treated like shit, and are now damaged goods. For any women reading, you were the ones operating the wrecking ball that did the aforementioned damage.
Fortunately I'm too young to be in either group yet. With any luck I will enter the third group women identify before hitting that stage. That group is 'married' or at least 'settled'. This is the group women identify as 'really great guys, but taken'. This bizzare naming convention can be explained as follows. Some are really great guys, the ones who would be in group number two who somehow were able (perhaps by suspending temporarily thier own morality and playing group one at thier own game?) to snag themselves a woman or two and settle down with one. Strangely enough this is the only group of men that women's wetware correctly identifies. Other's in this group are barsteds who would be in group one if they hadn't settled down. Women identfy these guys as 'really great' because they cant have them, and that instantly makes them desirable.
For any women reading this the moral to this story is simple. If, when you are thirty, you want to have a decent sized pool of 'nice' guys to choose from, ignore your wetware and fuck a nerd when you and they are young. Encourage your friends to fuck a nerd too. This of it as psychological maintenance of the mate pool. Don't reach 30 then complain because you and your friends didn't fuck enough nerds when you were younger.
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Hardly comparable. You don't get to claim that you are working with incomplete information when you create a culture within the intelligence community that only allows you to receive incomplete information.
"A lot of soldiers would have died, including a lot of US soldiers too. I doubt as many as were killed by the bombs though."
You doubt it. Have you researched that assertion?
Estimates at the time put the cost of Conquering Japan at between one and a half to four million Americans and over twice as many Japanese, many of those civilian. This not the Battle of the Ardennes, this is Stalingrad. To suggest that the invasion of Japan would be comparable to defeating Germany after the Russians had ripped the heart out of the Wehrmacht is absurd.
As it turns out supplies of the new purple hearts didn't even run out. They changed the design and produced a new batch. They could still be handing out WWII purple hearts if they wanted to.
Although I agree with the thrust of your argument it is worth keeping in mind that the Japanese were keen to surrender to the Americans than they were to the Soviets, who had just entered the Pacific War. Problem with deciding what the main cause of the Japanese surrender was is that you hear different things from different people.
I tend to view things this way. The reasons that were at the forefront of the mind of those who decided to drop the bomb were reprehensible. Showing the power of the bomb to the Soviets and American willingness to drop it were not good or moral reasons for the bombs use. That doesn't change the fact that the justification for dropping the bomb holds water. Just because many of the leaders of the day viewed the bomb primarily as a tool for diplomacy with the Soviets doesn't mean that the other reasons they had in mind were not justification enough.
Everyone who criticizes the decision to drop the bomb likes to forget that Truman and his advisors were working with incomplete information. The Soviets had essentially black balled the Japanese and refused to pass on their peace offerings in anticipation for the Soviet invasion. What the Americans knew about Japanese desires for peace that had obtained from code cracking efforts. The Japanese leadership was split, and even if the Emperor sided with the peace party a coup was entirely possible (more than this, when the Emperor did side with the peace party there was an attempted coup).
What can we say for sure? The Soviet invasion was more of a fear for the Japanese than the bomb was. The bomb did not cause as many deaths as fire bombing. What was happening in Eastern Europe (especially Poland) was no secret. If the bomb had been dropped a few more times (hard at the time since after Nagasaki there would be no more bombs for a while) then perhaps it would have been a bigger factor. What the bomb offered was an excuse for the Japanese leadership, particularly the Emperor to surrender.
"The enemy now possesses a new and terrible weapon with the power to destroy many innocent lives and do incalculable damage."
That sounds much better than something like:
"A new power has entered this war who will do untold cruelty to our people"
The first provides an excuse. This weapons is new, it is totally devastating. Surrender may bring dishonor, but we are surrendering because of a new and terrible weapon. The second sounds like the Emperor was prepared to sell out Japan because he could not bring himself to have his subjects do their duty in a conventional fight.
If the Americans had not dropped the bomb (assuming humanity would be alive to debate the issue) can we say for certain the hardliners would no have mounted a successful coup? Would Japan be split in two like Korea? How many more Americans and Japaneses would be dead? I cannot in all honesty answer that question. I don't know if the dropping the bomb saved lives. And I have the benefit of hindsight, something Truman did not have.
Given that Harvard MBAs are what they hand out to rich daddies children to get their big bucks and that the course content (like pretty much every MBAs) amounts to 'get to know your classmates, their daddies are rich and can get you good jobs / contracts because you are friends with their son', I'd suggest that the above statement lists George Bush's highest qualification.
Your response repeats many of what I believe are your previous errors so I will respond more concisely.
We do not, by your definition know that the Earth revolves around the sun. Can you show absolutely that the Earth goes around the Sun? Can you even show that there is a Sun?
If you admit this to be the case, then you must admit that we do not even know that people exist either. If people might not exist, trade might not exist. Then your whole philosophy falls apart. Then there is no knowledge except what we define. In that eventuality the only reason you could 'know' more than I do is if you defined more things than I do.
I also disagree with your concealed assumption that subjective value is unquantifiable.
You have an odd definition of mathematics. You seem to consider anything which is not a zero sum game to be outside of mathematics when in fact that is not the case. The case you listed can be analyzed mathematically and very simply. It is true that the DVD is worth more to the individual buying it that $20. For example it might be worth up to $25 dollars to them. Best Buy on the other hand value it at less than $20 dollars. They may value it at $15 say. This is not a problem for mathematics. We can analyse the problem using game theory. Very simple game theory. There are four possibilities, each individually agrees to trade or not to trade. It is obvious that there is a net benefit to both parties if they agree to trade and no benefit if neither trades. For the three cases where someone decides not to trade (no trade+no trade, trade+no trade and no trade+trade) the value for Best Buy is $15 dollars and for the buyer it is $20 dollars. If they both agree to trade then Best Buy gets a pay off of $20 dollars (a $5 dollar increase) and the buyer gets a payoff of $25 dollars (also a five dollar increase $5). Everyones position is improved, and the trade leads to an efficient system (one that cant be improved). Heck we can even quantify the amount of value that has been added to the system due to the trade. Overall the system is up $10. Any quantity which can be well defined can be calculated because the example is so trivial.
You say that subjective value has been increased. What other kind of value is there? We can define the cost of goods, in the sense that the market price for goods will be some amount, but that doesn't necessarily reflect their value because value is inherently subjective.
You haven't actually proved anything about the world with this example though. You have made a bunch of glaring assumptions. You have assumed that people will trade when in increases the (as you say subjective) value of their wealth. You can show this assumption is on the whole valid by a properly controlled experiment and a good use of statistics, but you haven't learned that it is the case until you do the experiment. You have assumed that Best Buy and the buyer are both rational, that they wont suddenly for no good reason decide not to engage in the transaction. This is actually a serious flaw in more complicated arguments because people do sometimes randomly change strategy and it does lead to complicated effects like efficient solutions not being fluttering hand stable.
You are misguided if you think that the purely mathematical analysis you have done (which is a crude version of game theory) has taught you anything. If anything, it has concealed what you don't know because you think you have learned a new truth when you have made a collection of unproven (but testable) assumptions.
Your suggestion that trade in some way violates some principle of mathematics is absurd. If one assumes that the object has intrinsic value outside of what the purchaser is prepared to pay for it then it is true that this value seems at once to be both greater than and less than itself, but this is just an indication that the assumption that objects have value above that which they are worth to individuals (or collections of individuals). Experiment has shown (and your experience has shown) this is not the case. Your reasoning lead you to the correct conclusion but for the wrong reason. It was not the fault of mathematics that the theory "everything has an objective value" is wrong. It is the fault of the assumption of the theory.
It is certainly the case that these profound assertions, coupled with the experiments that back them up, lead one inexorably to new explanations for the existence of society, for the division of labor and so on. But they theory is inherently mathematical, and it is this mathematical nature which allows you to draw these conclusion.
I will admit I have no idea what the 'identity property' is. I'm assuming that you mean to suggest that the situation before trade and after trade are iden
I appreciate that basic errors can occur in sciences. Assumptions can be wrong. That is precisely the reason you want broad ranging studies like the precursors to this one which establish theories which can later be demonstrated or rejected by a later study.
The suggestion that mathematics or statistics could have epistemological errors is philosophical hand wrangling. Fine, if you were a philosopher. But only a lunatic would suggest that the field of statistics is in some way undermined by such controversies as the axiom of choice.
Mathematics is not a science. You cannot get incorrect assumptions, only inconsistent assumptions. Or assumptions that are not necessary or not liked.
While I don't understand your example from economics (I think you are talking about the difference between a zero sum game and a non-zero sum game), the problem you describe involves replacing an equals sign with a greater than sign. It is entirely possible to handle that situation in mathematics. What is more, since the human brain is just a collection of neurons, anything which cannot be understood mathematically, cannot be understood by humans since you can completely represent all of the possible algorithms the brain can using elementary branches of mathematics.
You cant advance knowledge without knowing how well you know something. Now I don't happen to believe that most papers that are published advance knowledge. Part of the reason is that nearly every arts, humanities or social science paper makes any number of common errors. Heck even the hard science have these basic errors in them. They might use the wrong statistical test. They might propose a theory without testing it or offering any way of testing it. The bottom line is the only types of paper that actually advance knowledge are those that propose a new theory and a way of testing it, and those that actually test those theories. Unless of course we are talking pure mathematics or philosophy.
If we really want to improve the quality of studies that are generated then term long statistics courses should be mandatory for any major which seeks to advance scientific knowledge.
If you cant analyze it mathematically, how can you discover anything at all? If you don't have a significance or error to go with your result then you have no idea if your result is ball park, dead on, or just plain wrong. Everything which can be stated as fact requires a standard estimate of uncertainty from statistics. When that is not available the least reliable source or list of sources on which the conclusion is based is quoted. It is then understood that this exists to guide a future mathematical approach, or to set up assumptions.
The same approach exists in other sciences and even mathematics itself. We haven't proved the Riemann hypothesis, we are not sure if it is true, but there is lots of evidence to suggest as much. And there are lots of things that we have shown are equivalent to proving the Riemann hypothesis. The bottom line however, is that until the Riemann hypothesis is shown to be true, everything based on it is also unproven albeit interesting speculation. The same problem exists in physics. The Higgs particle has never been observed directly, but if we speculate that it is there then we can explain a number of experimental results. Until I see a Higgs particle come out of the LHC however I will not consider it's existence to have been demonstrated.
The quest for historical fact should be the same as any other science, simply coupled with the acceptance that unlike the hard sciences it is much easier to produce speculation without proof than it is to produce hard results. This results in a difference in method, not in objective.
The mathematical approach is never inappropriate when your objective is to establish fact.
A friend of my studied history at university. You know what one of her lecturers told her after her first essay.
"No one gives a fuck what you think."
This is exactly how I feel about modern 'Journalism' and writers. I don't want some long flowery introduction which contains no new information, and is usually designed to cloud my opinion with the authors bias. Or worse 'teases' me with a hint of what might be the case later in the article. I want the facts. If I had by way news would be in bullet points. I don't care how good you can spell, how pretty your prose is or how how wonderful you write. I want facts. I don't read the news to be given opinions or bias, I don't read it to admire how well written it is.
I also don't care what the experts say unless they have some actual evidence to back it up. I don't want to hear 'Well if I was a betting man I'd guess that...', I want to hear 'In 1967 there was a similar incident with...'. I can make up my own mind. Write the news like the person reading it has more than 3 functional brain cells.
To anyone thinking of going into 'Journalism' who wants to appeal to me and others like me in my generation, cut the crap. We have no patience, and it is a good thing. When we want to be entertained, we read fiction. The other day I picked up a magazine and after 3 paragraphs I gave up. After three paragraphs there wasn't a single fact. I didn't know anything about the article except about where it was written.
I have no sympathy for 'Journalists'. If they spent half as much time actually doing real investigations, exposing all the crap that goes on in this world and less of it brown nosing themselves into cushy positions and working on their pretty prose, then they might actual out perform the bloggers.
Even the article itself is unbelievably indirect and full of opinions without facts. Three paragraphs in and I still don't know any new information, other than some artist thinks he has an unquantifiable talent. Big wow. All artists think they have an unquantifiable talent. Eventually I find out that we are talking mostly about people who write books. Writers. Great, so am I going to find out how writers have been affected? No I'm going to get a bunch of opinions from a sample of unknown quality. Great, so I might as well go ask my mate Dave what he thinks the internet has done to writers.
Of course this problem is indicative of a much wider one. Virtually no one who works in a field which is primarily artists know how to determine facts. And what information they do have, they have no idea how to present concisely. Half the books I read could be one third the length. You want an example of a well written factual book? I advise every Journalist to go and read 'General Relativity' by P. A. M. Dirac. It's only short, but contains a bucket of information. That is how a book should be.
It isn't just people who write books. Take the media, we have 24 hours of non-news. They speculate and get half baked experts on to double the speculation, and don't bother to go and get any new details themselves. Save for the odd human interest story that tells you absolutely nothing about the big picture.
Case in point, when is the White House press core going to grow a pair and ask some tough questions and demand real answers? When are we going to get reports with some real statistics in that talk about how Iraq is actually going? I shouldn't have to watch a report to congress by General Petraeus to see some actual charts and data on how things are going. Heck I know his report is going to be biased but when no one at CNN seems to know what a pie chart is and prefers to endlessly run off the same pictures of Baghdad while pointlessly speculating what am I going to do? I don't care about human interest stories. I don't care how patriotic you guys in the media think you are being. I want the facts.
The president compares Iraq to Vietnam, I have to go to bloody Wikipedia to bring up the differences in casualty rates so I can decide for myse
Unless Microsoft distribute GPL 3 software they are not. Under the Novell deal they now have to, but since the deal is now very unfair to Microsoft the smart thing to do would be to try to renegotiate it with Novell. They are entitled to do this because of these unforeseen circumstances. This is what Microsoft should be doing, but they aren't. I've no idea why. Maybe they want to provoke a court case. Maybe they don't care about GPL 3 because they just want their patents for FUD and don't actually intend to drop the patent bomb. Maybe Novell is being belligerent. Maybe there is something Microsoft knows that I don't that would prevent them renegotiating the deal. Point is at the moment I've not heard anything from Microsoft suggesting they plan to revisit the deal with a mind to avoiding distributing GPL 3.
You analysis, while factually accurate makes hidden assumptions.
You assume that the only way to make money from music is by selling it unit by unit. A co-operative which pays musicians per song produced might also work. While after making the song, it has zero marginal cost, making the next song does not. The system in question is called patronage, and for the first time in history ordinary people can, via the internet, become a patron of the arts.
You have also missed that legitimate copies of music have added value to many people. The problem is that the added value is not 99c to most.
The situation you are describing at the end of your post has a name. It is an excellent description of monopoly pricing. Now artists are given this monopoly as part of a social contract in the hope that by making music more valuable than it actually is, there will be more, higher quality music entering the public domain.
At present, in my lifetime I have yet to see much benefit from the copyright system. It is supposed to give me access to my cultural heritage after a limited time. Yet people can put DRM on culture to stop it ever entering the public domain, and copyright terms are near infinite.
Copyright exists to enhance the public domain. Cant enhance the public domain if it cant enter it. Choice is simple, release music without DRM, get copyright protection. Release music with DRM, lose copyright protection and don't come crying when the DRM is broken.
Same goes for software released with copy protection. How can it enter the public domain if there is no way to copy it?
I stand corrected. While the sum of the casualties since WWII wouldn't have run out the stock pile of purple hearts of 1945 manufacture, the design was changed and new ones are manufactured. Those new design purple hearts are what are currently being awarded.
Your idea has been addressed else where, but I will point out the obvious problems.
Your plan needs 3 bombs (between 4 and 6 if you want to do more than one strike and you are lucky), and they only had 2, with the next one some time away. Every week of delay cost lives (Japanese, American, Chinese etc., and soon Russian).
Your plan demonstrates an unwillingness to use the bomb, precisely the opposite of what you want to do.
You plan alerts Japan to the existence of the bomb. At this stage in the war Japan was not intercepting small bomber groups to conserve fuel. You make it obvious you have the bomb, then they would have started intercepting again.
Any human being whose reaction to the death of a quarter of a million people isn't sheer horror is a monster. However, that doesn't make the alternatives better.
An interesting combination of Ad Hominem and a straw man.
I said the justification that was in the minds of those using the bomb was reprehensible. Not the decision itself. Is that so hard to grasp? They made the right choice, for the wrong reason.
Your next points disregard the rules of war glibly. Your philosophy would cause more civilian death than a thousand of the men who undertook Hiroshima. You do not understand the nature of war.
From what I understand your figures are the mid to high end estimates for casualties. I agree with you, but I wanted to be sure my figures were defensible, so I opted for the low end. I knew I could continue to make my point accepting high figures for the deaths from Hiroshima and Nagasaki and low figures for the deaths for Operation Downfall.
Very moving and emotive. What would you have done that would have saved those lives?
I've addressed every point you have made else where. I have already conceded that the reason the Administration had for dropping the bomb was morally reprehensible. However all of the quotes you have given talk of surrender, not unconditional surrender. If you do not believe that a power which has committed copious war crimes and conducted a war in a manner so morally reprehensible as to deserve the title infamous, should be deconstructed, that is your choice.
I will answer some of the quotes you present. Eisenhower was mostly involved in Europe. His pacific counterparts did not agree with his assessment and I choose to believe them because they would know better.
Suing for peace != unconditional surrender. I've already acknowledge that militarily the atom bomb did not determine the outcome of the war. Heck the outcome of the war was known after Midway.
Surrender != unconditional surrender.
Dropping the atom bomb to force unconditional surrender is not the same as dropping the bomb as a last ditch spiteful move to kill civilians. A better comparison might be, what if the Germans had the bomb in 1941 and destroyed Scapa Flo?
I'm not American, I'm British. And I agree with most of what you have said. The American military reasoning for dropping the bomb was reprehensible. Doesn't change the fact that the 'excuse' they gave for doing so holds water.
I'm well aware that the total deaths from dropping the bombs total around a quarter of a million. I also had in my mind the bombing of Dresden and Tokyo. However, the fact remains that if Imperial Japan had been allowed to survive that number would be a drop in the ocean, because you can bet your arse that the Soviet Union would have found an excuse to restart the war at a later date if Japan didn't essentially become a satellite state of the United States.
A demonstration would not suffice. For a start it would tell the Japanese that the Americans had the bomb. The Japanese were not intercepting lone bombers at this stage because of a lack of fuel. If they know that they were carring the atom bomb that might have changed that. Besides, a demonstration would appear weak, like the Americans were unwilling to use the bomb.
I believe the US military has been responsible for many immoral acts. The Vietnam war immediately springs to mind. The premature invasion of Iraq in the second gulf war. The premature exit from the first gulf war without forcing unconditional surrender, leaving thousands of Shiite insurgents to die in a rebellion the Americans encouraged.
It is not a question of inability to admit the failing of my own (or in fact your country), but rather my capacity to way evidence without becoming overwhelmed by the horror of the facts.
What purely military base should they have targetted? You know of a naval base not inside a city?
Osama bin Laden is not leader of a sovereign state. Nor was the intent of the 9/11 attacks to target military infrastructure in the case of the World Trade Center. Nor did the people delivering the attacks wear a uniform marking them as combatants. There was no declaration of war (at least in part because you have to be a sovereign state to declare war). If the West was at war with Saudi Arabia and they fire bombed Washington to get to the pentagon, that would be a fairer comparison.
The actually reasons for using the bomb are morally reprehensible, but the excuses given hold. All I am saying is you put me in Harry S. Truman's shoes and give me the two choices he was faced with, I would in good conscience make the same decision he did.
There is considerable debate on this issue as far as I know. Militarily the Soviet Union posed far more of a threat to the short and long term security of the civilians of Japan (it's not like what happened to Berlin was a secret, or what would happen to eastern Europe wasn't known). There is however one thing that is clear. The atomic bomb gave Emporer Hirohito (and to some extent Togo) the excuse he was looking for the push for an end to the war on all fronts. Civilians would understand surrender faced with this new terrifying weapon. The coup attempt that resulted from the repeated attempts to surrender was probably far smaller than it would have been without the bomb. The terms of the surrender were sufficient for the allies. The last one is the key. Without the bomb, would the Japanese have accepted unconditional surrender (with the exception of the retention of the Emporer) if the allies did not have the bomb? Maybe, but we know four of the big six wanted to reject the Potsdam declaration out of hand until the extent of the Soviet attacks became known, and the attack on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Then it was split 3-3. Without the intervention of Emporer Hirohito (who certainly considered the bomb important) this deadlock may have lasted.
I don't know what the result would have been without the bomb. Perhaps the Japanese would have continued fighting until it was clear that the Soviets were preparing to invade Korea, or perhaps the Japanese islands themselves. It is possible that without the bomb the Japanese would have used losing territory to the Soviet Union as a bargaining chip against the Americans to get more favourable terms.
Your point about American B-17 raids on Japan is a good one. It is important to remember these were small nukes. The building directly under the bomb survived the explosion in Hiroshima. This does strongly suggest that the bomb was not, in the military leaderships mind, a deciding factor, considering that the death toll in Tokyo from fire bombing was higher than in Hiroshim or Nagasaki through the atomic bomb. However, the bomb is more than a incendiary weapon. I believe the Emporer said it best in his radio address to the Japanese people:
"The enemy now possesses a new and terrible weapon with the power to destroy many innocent lives and do incalculable damage."
The key word being terrible. The atomic bomb, more so than any other weapon, was terrifying. It is this terror that gave the Emporer the option of offering surrender (along with the Soviet invasion).
The estimated American casualties alone for the invasion of Japan are around two to four times that. Now consider that they are better equipped and supplied than their conscripted Japanese adversary who would have suffered far worse. In addition most of the Japanese casualties would be civilian.
I'm certainly not glorifying the killing of civilians. However, if I presented to you a choice. Kill a quarter of a million Japanese now, or kill half a million Americans and 4 million Japanese over three to four months of bloody combat, what would you choose? If you choose to kill four million more people just because you don't like the word nuclear or because you think in some way being shot is better than dieing in giant fireball, then I believe you to be a cold heartless bastard.
Hell the United States is still handing out purple hearts of 1945 manufacture because of the anticipated casualties of the Japanese campaign were higher than the sum total of wounded or dead servicemen in every war since.
I suggested what the Japanese intent was. They believed they could break their 'inferior' American foe. The Americans had plans for Olympic which forecast many more casualties that the Japanese thought the Americans could take. All you have done is prove my point, the Americans would have accepted the high casualties and pushed on, since they planned for them anyway. The bottom line is that while the Japanese hoped to bring the war to an end with tens of thousands of casualties by breaking the American will to fight, that was not going to happen. You are suggesting an option (American capitulation to the Japanese plan) which was never on the table to begin with.
Alright Woodrow Wilson, if thats what you want to believe.
I firmly believe that Hitler was helped by the fact that he was able to convince many Germans that the treaty of Versaille was unfair because the 'November Criminals' had signed it while Germany still had some effective military and could still fight the war. Coupled with the fact that the terms of the treaty were humiliating themselves (full blame for the war placed on Germany, reparations, Sudentenland handed over to the new Czechoslovakia, splitting Germany in two). Unconditional surrender is not about humiliation. The requirement of unconditional surrender existed because the conduct of those states with which the allies were fighting required wholesale removal of thier leadership and replacement by an authority that would be cast iron allies of the West. Unconditional surrender was just another way of saying to the militarist leaders of Japan "we will dismantle your government, and you will be tried for war crimes".
Yeah, but not unconditionally surrender. This was to prevent the Great War mistakes. Japan had seriously violated just about every reasonable practice of war, and the dropping of the atom bomb shortened the war, and help stop them.
Japan was not going to surrender in two weeks, they were via diplomatic back channels suing for peace, this is not the same as offering unconditional surrender. In the end the Japanese still insisted that they be allowed to keep their Emporer, and the allies agreed to this demand, instead of being belligerent. I don't know where you got this myth that the Japanese were willing to surrender unconditionally, but the whole point of further increasing the size of their armed services during and after Okinawa was to make taking the islands of Japan as much like the battle for Okinawa as possible. That would have resulted in extreme causalities on both sides. The idea was that by a few tens of thousands of casualties the Americans and their allies would agree to more favourable terms than unconditional surrender. Heck if it had been like Okinawa they might even have managed to force those terms, which would have been a disaster.
The Japanese were determined to fight on to get a better peace deal. They had already lost the war so of course they were suing for peace. The only question remains, is it right to target military installations in the cities of your enemy during a time of war to force his surrender, knowing that tens of thousands of civilians will die. If you believe the allies were right to demand unconditional surrender (which I do), and if you believe that the Americans should have kept their nerve conducting the invasion and no accepted a lesser peace, then one is forced to ask the following question. Which course of action would cost more civilian lives, more destruction of infrastructure, and more military lives. The answer to all three is invasion. Dropping the bomb saved lives, civilian, military, and preserved what little remained of Japans infrastructure.
It is to my mind, the only time in history dropping the bomb would be acceptable, because of the unique set of circumstances at the time.
I really don't get this position of yours. The FSF hasn't done anything to Microsoft. Novell has. Microsoft entered into a deal with Novell which in light of recent license changes is clearly unfair. Microsoft can renegotiate the deal with Novell.
The deal with Novell was that Microsoft would distribute and indemnify Novells customers in return for cash + a other less relevant terms. Now the contract effectively stipulates that Microsoft must give away licenses to their patents. The Novell-Microsoft deal is therefore now unfair and the consequences of the deal disproportionate. Microsoft has three options:
1. Stick with the (obviously unfair and would never now hold in arbitration) deal and give out the patent licenses.
2. Renegotiate the deal.
3. Welch on the deal entirely and take the resulting legal consequences.
The FSF has nothing to do with any of this because Microsoft has not entered into any agreement with the FSF save GPL 2. If the distribute software under GPL 3 then they enter into a new deal with the FSF. Both of these deals are seperate from the Novell deal.
That is why it is different from your examples. The code that is GPL 2 is still GPL 2. It is not like a cable company changing the rules at the drop of a hat because you are free to still play by the old rules if you want to. You just have to maintain the code yourself.
The female of the species never cease to amaze me. They hit 30 and complain that all men are either taken or barsteds. In the group of barsteds there are two types:
Actual barsteds:
For any women who want to know how to recognise an actual barsted, you identify them as men who 'seemed nice at first'. For any women who want help with their mate selection, avoid any man who 'seems nice at first'. Unless of course you mean 'nice' in the 'love him like a brother nice'. This group regularly gets laid because of a translation error in the female dictionary that mixed up 'nice' with 'actual barsted'. We are sorry, the dictionary was still in beta when civilisation developed and no one has worked out how to undo million's of years of evolution yet. However women are never satisfied with this group because while they are good in bed, they are also, ahem, barsteds.
Bitter:
This group didn't start out as barsteds. For any women still reading, these are the guys you turned down because they were 'too nice'. After 10 years of being too nice, they have got the message. Of course being barsted doesn't have the desired effect because the actual barsted have 10 years practice on them, and waaaaaaay more experienced.
This is why all men are barsteds. One group was treated like kings, when in fact, they make the cookie monster look like a genius. The other group were treated like shit, and are now damaged goods. For any women reading, you were the ones operating the wrecking ball that did the aforementioned damage.
Fortunately I'm too young to be in either group yet. With any luck I will enter the third group women identify before hitting that stage. That group is 'married' or at least 'settled'. This is the group women identify as 'really great guys, but taken'. This bizzare naming convention can be explained as follows. Some are really great guys, the ones who would be in group number two who somehow were able (perhaps by suspending temporarily thier own morality and playing group one at thier own game?) to snag themselves a woman or two and settle down with one. Strangely enough this is the only group of men that women's wetware correctly identifies. Other's in this group are barsteds who would be in group one if they hadn't settled down. Women identfy these guys as 'really great' because they cant have them, and that instantly makes them desirable.
For any women reading this the moral to this story is simple. If, when you are thirty, you want to have a decent sized pool of 'nice' guys to choose from, ignore your wetware and fuck a nerd when you and they are young. Encourage your friends to fuck a nerd too. This of it as psychological maintenance of the mate pool. Don't reach 30 then complain because you and your friends didn't fuck enough nerds when you were younger.